Where to begin?
He arrives in the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel, incongruous among the potted ferns, marble floors and mirrors. He wears a baseball cap squashed low on his head, a T-shirt, jeans and unlaced running shoes, their long, fat tongues hanging out as if panting in the heat.
He sucks back long swigs of coloured water from a large plastic bottle. He barely looks at me, and when he does, he has to tilt his head back a bit to see out from under the peak of his cap.
I take his paw to shake it. He grunts hello. I follow him to a table.
Sorry, I should have mentioned that this is Forrest Griffin, top-ranked mixed martial-arts fighter. On the front cover of his new book, he's dressed like a latter-day Neanderthal, in a loincloth affixed to his waist with duct tape, holding a dead squirrel in one fist, a cleaver in the other.
That would have said it all, to be honest. His book is titled Be Ready When The Sh*t Goes Down: A Survival Guide to the Apocalypse, a testament, as if anyone needs one, that popular culture knows no limits. You don't want to read it unless you're a male between the ages of 14 and 35. Which he helpfully states in the first few pages. His first book, Got Fight?, which was no less scatological, was a New York Times bestseller.
He often twitches his head to one side. "Tight muscles," the 31-year-old grumbles. Before he won the first season of Spike TV's The Ultimate Fighter in 2005 and subsequently shot to fame, Mr. Griffin worked in law enforcement. "I was with the po-leece," he explains. He swats at his big cauliflower ears when I ask him about them. "They used to lay back a bit more," he offers with a shrug before explaining that genetics cause some fighters to develop them.
He takes another swig of water.
Does the success of his books' lewd, warped humour surprise him?
"Why not write it in a book and get people to pay actual money to read your bullshit stories?" he answers while averting his gaze. He crooks one leg up, resting a foot on his knee. He picks at the tongue of the shoe. "Imagine what kind of giant ego stroke that is," he offers with a grin.
This is his defensive offence: to admit to his flaws, to claim his extreme idiotic guy-ness.
"I like to see how offensive I can get without crossing that line," he continues, sizing me up. "It's an interesting game to play."
And?
"I wrote an article for Revolver and it was very offensive."
About?
He looks up, unsure how to proceed.
"About the sexiest animal."
What was that about? I have no idea what he will say. I don't even know the publication, which is a heavy metal magazine.
He hesitates. It's about what animal he would have intercourse with, he finally offers.
"Oh," I reply, feigning professional equanimity. That's my best stance: be like a doctor who remains calm while listening to a patient's embarrassing medical tale.
"And for me, it was a deer," he barrels on , unfazed. "I grew up in Georgia around deer. And I always felt deer - the way they moved and stuff …" he trails off. "And they got this come-hither look, and this little cotton-ball tail. I like deer. They're kinda cool. But nothing happened. There was no response to the article."
We veer off to his youth. His birth father left the family when Mr. Griffin, an only child, was 18 months old. His mother remarried and his late stepfather, Abe, who was a contractor, taught him everything he needed to know about masculinity. Even when his mother divorced Abe after four years, he continued to play an important role in Mr. Griffin's life. "He was the essence of a man. When he took his shirt off, he was, like, scarred with a tan line. He was shot in the head in Vietnam, did three tours, got malaria, got all these medals. We stayed in touch. We had dinner every Wednesday night my whole life. He got me a job. I called him when I got in trouble."
So is his book a celebration of raw manliness?
"It's very unmanly to change yourself for others," he says, attempting to turn erudite. "Be comfortable with oneself. There have been feminist movements but there's never been a male one."
"What about Robert Bly's Iron John?"
"Never heard about it. Not my generation," he says. He goes on to explain his version of masculinity. "Embrace manliness. Fix shit. Do shit. Be a man. Taking care of your family is the manliest thing you can do. He doesn't wear cologne. He does enough to stay clean and fix stuff, you know? He occasionally uses motor oil to swish his hair out of his face."
And how does his wife, Jaime, feel? They have been married for nearly a year. "She's heard it all before. She's heard me drunk telling stories, you know." They met in the gym of the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, where they both live.
And his mother?
"She knows I'm a good person deep down," he says. "And that it's fun and I enjoy doing stupid stuff. But there's a good heart, and it's not malicious. I'm not trying to use people. I don't want to hurt people. I'm just trying to have a good time."
He looks up with a wan expression.
He then tells me a story about sleeping with a woman whom, he later discovers through a friend, was born a man. He felt sick. (He provides details.) "I'm attracted to fake boobs," he explains with another shrug. "That's what got me. I'm a fan."
Does his wife have them? I want to give him some of his own medicine now.
"Oh, that's too personal," he replies, suddenly taken aback.
The conversation winds down. Is there anything he'd like to add, I wonder.
"No." He pauses, appearing unsure of himself. "Maybe deleted," he tosses over his shoulder as he lurches for the exit.