Nip n tuck, p.5
Nip 'n' Tuck, page 5
Her two inflated, fleshy Dunlop tyres mouthed, ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. They provide so many hours of harmless entertainment for the rest of us.’ And with that, I took my cellulite and my crinkles and stomped the hell out of there.
‘Let’s see if you feel that way once you turn forty,’ she called out after me.
‘Once and for all, forty is not old,’ I tossed over my shoulder.
‘Only women who are about to turn forty say that. It’s a terrible age. TOO OLD TO LAMBADA, TOO YOUNG TO DIE.’
* * *
All the way to BBC Television Centre, I massaged my poor, battered ego. I had lived. I had learned. I’d had experiences. I had earned these crows’ feet, goddamn it! Isn’t experience as valuable, in professional terms, as having young skin?
Yeah, right. And Cher is ageing naturally.
The first blow to my fragile confidence came when I dashed into the doughnut-shaped building known as the Beeb to find myself being taken aside by the production team – Raphael, Crusoe and Dweezil. (It was like working for the Ninja Turtles.) They were PR-ed, upstart, X-generationers (as in X-tremely arrogant), who could pat you on your back to your face while kicking you in your face to your back. Raphael was sorry, he palavered, that I’d missed that morning’s meeting because there had been a long discussion about ‘image’ during which it was decided that I should be shifted from the prime-time slot and replaced by a blow-waved anchorman recently poached from Channel 5.
At first I presumed it was just another instance of There But For the Genetalia Go I.
But no. His appeal, Raphael insisted, was not that he had balls, but that he had what the producer called ‘TVQ’ – Televisual Quotient. In other words, he was young.
I felt a brittle, crumbling sensation inside. ‘Why? Does it make the news any better?’ The office was open plan and all my colleagues were periscoping over their flimsy, carpeted partitions, straining to overhear the conversation.
‘I’m being demoted for someone prettier!’ I announced to them all, as I tried in vain to lasso my extravagant tendrils of hair back into a ponytail.
‘Demoted is such a negative little word, yeah?’ the acned Raphael condescended, sucking on a pen that was probably twice as big as his dick. ‘Think of it more as a staff feng shui. We could offer you Playschool? That whole mum thing. You can relate to that, yeah?’
Despite the profound sense of loss engulfing me, I squared my shoulders. ‘Screw you and the ageist policy change you rode in on. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’d like to go and spend some more quality time with my wrinkles.’
Which is why I left pretty much as I’d arrived – fired with enthusiasm.
I know you’d have to be a Trappist vegan celibate not to get hurt in Life, but losing my hubby and my job in twenty-four hours did seem one visit too many from the Fuck-up Fairy. Bumper-to-bumpering back along Euston Road, arms clenched around the steering-wheel, I tried to contain the anguish I felt inside. I rang my sister and ascertained her location – a shabby photo graphic studio in Camden. I drove straight there to find her erotically draped over a couple of seventy-year-old men wearing cardigans.
‘What the hell are you advertising?’
‘Viagra. It was all the agency could get me. Now do you understand why I need to be rescued by something tall, dark and Sven-like?’
‘Well, don’t give any Viagra to Sven. He’ll only get taller,’ I said caustically.
‘Ha bloody ha. So what’s up?’
When I’d numbly reported the change in my employment status, her voice shivered. ‘Christ, Elisabeth. Well, you really can’t afford to lose your husband now. If you’re not going to improve your looks, then you’d better get bloody good in bed.’
A hollow laugh escaped my lips. ‘Hugo and I’ve been together for eleven years. To us, “good in bed” means not snoring, farting or taking all the covers.’
‘Really? I always thought Hugo might be quite imaginative in the sack.’ She paused to pout for the camera, looking exactly like one of those tribal women on the Discovery Channel with plates in their bottom lip. She really should have been advertising tableware. ‘Has the passion really gone?’
‘Put it this way, my birthday present was a weed-whacker.’
‘A weed-whacker? Bloody hell. Then you have got to get more creative in bed.’
‘What are you suggesting? Origami?’
‘No! Toys, games, fantasies, French ticklers, benwah balls, banana-flavoured erecto-gel … Become alluring and sensual. Sex keeps you young. And it’s terribly good for your complexion.’
All the way home up Haverstock Hill (and much to the amusement of other motorists), I practised alluring and sensual facial expressions in the rear-view mirror. After a particularly jubilant response from a group of schoolboys at the traffic lights I rang Vicky back. ‘Posing provocatively in latex lederhosen is not the way to intrigue a husband like mine. Think about it. What first captivated him? My composure while under fire. I was too shell-shocked to fight with him last night. If I can just keep my dignity and not get all desperate …’ the car moaned around the corner of my cobbled street ‘… Hugo will have enough space to take a fresh look at me, to remember what he loved about me in the first bloody place. I mean, what could be more attractive to an errant husband, I ask you, than a cool, in-control wife?’
It was then that I crashed into the red pillar-box. I wasn’t hurt, but the sheer shock of it made me slump over the wheel and sob uncontrollably. A blur of raggedness tumbling through the passenger side door slowly resolved into the shambolic shape of Calim.
‘Jaysus. Are you okay?’
‘I’m having a pulmonary embolism, but apart from that …’
‘What’s goin’ on?’
‘Oh, nothing much. I’ve lost my job and … and my sister just told me that I have the erotic appeal of a dental-floss dispenser.’
He grinned coyly, rummaging through his pockets for a crumpled tissue. ‘J’know what men really find excitin’ in bed? A woman who’s confident enough to enjoy sex … and you’re a confident woman, Lizzie.’
I blew my nose. ‘You’ve been to say-the-right-thing school, haven’t you, Cal?’
‘But it is true, Lizzie. Bein’ sexy is more to do with bein’ at ease with your body than anythin’ else. I don’t know any woman with a perfect body … but I know loads of sexy ones. A woman who’s really juiced up, whatever her shape, is more erotic than a woman who walks backwards out of bedrooms.’
Like airbags in a car, sensitivity in a man is an optional extra. And Cal was clearly top of the range. I squeezed his arm. ‘Are you sure you’re not gay?’
‘Hey, I’m so in touch with my feminine side I’m startin’ to complain about me wobbly thighs. Lemme help you out of there.’
Since the driver’s door was wedged up against the post-box, I had to slide across the console. It was then, to add insult to injury, that I got impaled on the gear lever. The symbolism proved too much for me. ‘Hugo … was … unfaithful.’ I started sobbing again.
Cal reeled. ‘No! Who with?’
‘Britney … I can’t even put her name in my mouth, I mean you never know where it’s been. The Artist Formerly Known as Slut.’
‘Amore? Britney Amore? Christ almighty.’
‘Yes. The actress from Genital Hospital. I walked in on them. He said it was just a kiss, but his hand was between her legs. She was naked. And I’m pretty sure his fly was at half-mast. I couldn’t tell if he was zipping it down, or – or zipping it up.’
My mobile phone shrieked. It was Jamie’s teacher, Ms Savage, reminding me that I’d promised to go on the afternoon excursion to the British Museum. ‘You signed the return slip and tore along the dotted line at the bottom,’ she reminded me sternly.
‘School,’ I said, staggering out of the car. ‘Excursion. I forgot.’
‘Tell her you can’t go. Tell her you’re a meningitis carrier.’
‘Only a certificate of death – a recent one – would be an acceptable excuse for Ms Savage. Could you drive me?’
Hampstead is built on one of the few high hills in London. The sunshine had vapourized and the city below us had become so grey it looked veiled in gauze – a perfect meteorological match for my mood. In minutes the sky darkened and a passing storm shattered on to the streets. Puddles hissed beneath car tyres. Cal pulled me into his battered Volkswagen with the the bumper bar sticker ‘Who cares who’s on board?’ On the dashboard was a hand-scribbled note declaring, ‘No radio. Already stolen.’
‘I’m going to stick a sign on Hugo,’ I said, ‘reading, “This is not an abandoned husband”.’
‘Obviously,’ Cal said, trying to concertina his six-foot frame behind the wheel, ‘I’m only drivin’ this wee car to prove that I have an enormous cock. You do understand that, right?’
As he contorted into the driver’s seat, I lectured myself quite sternly. It was no good looking for my self-esteem in Lost Property. I could compete with that Slutcicle. I had a vivid, quirky imagination. Whereas Britney was a No-brow. She was ninety-eight per cent personality free. She was Bimbo-lite. One week and he’d be sick of the bland taste of her. Whereas I was a complex carbo of a woman. A nourishing, filling, well-balanced meal. I could make Wildean epigrams. Do cryptic crosswords. I knew the square root of the hypotenuse. She, on the other hand, was nothing more than a mattress with breasts – something to lie down on while having a shag – president of the Vaginal Discharge Self-Help Group. Our relationship was based on more than just tawdry sex. We had a deep commitment. Goddamn it. I was a return-slip-tear-along-the-dotted-line-at-the-bottom signer! I was not going to degrade myself by trying to compete with the likes of her. It was good in a marriage to create a little intrigue, but that didn’t mean greeting my husband at the door in edible undies.
Cal finally squeezed into take-off position and shook his mad hair. Water drops flew off his curls like spangled jewels. As he careered down the street, contenting himself by making helpful corrective gestures at other drivers, I felt a rekindled faith in my husband. I’d overreacted. Birthday blues had made me feel vulnerable, that was all. Maybe it really was just a kiss. And what was that, after all? Just the anatomical juxtaposition of two orbicularis oris muscles in a state of contraction. It was clear that Britney Amore was nothing more than a fly on the windscreen of my life.
Awash with relief I rang Hugo to tell him how much I loved him. The hospital said he’d gone home for lunch. I rang the cleaner. She said Hugo had called to say he’d be staying late at the hospital.
We were outside Jamie’s school gates. ‘Where to now, ma’am?’ Cal asked, doffing an imaginary hat.
‘A whip emporium. Pronto. I need to buy benwah balls, banana-flavoured erecto gel, French ticklers and a vibrator with forward and reverse gears.’
Another thing a worldly, smart thirty-nine-year-old woman needs to know: up against a Sex Goddess, principles and profundity are about as useful as a eunuch at a whipped-cream orgy.
5
If I Can’t Have It All, Can I At Least Have Some of Hers?
THE FEMALE ORGASM is more of a mystery than the continued career success of George W. Bush. But, by God, I was determined to have one with my husband. An Academy award-winning one – better than any two-bit telly actress could pull off.
After a quick detour to a sex shop called Ssssh, Cal had dropped me, late, at the British Museum so I could go into Mother Mode. We got home from collecting Julia to find a message on the answering machine from Hugo, saying he’d be back at seven. I consulted my watch. That gave me one and a half hours. In between burning chicken nuggets and checking maths homework, I ran to the bathroom, showered and shampooed. I pffted with that spray and pffted with another, powdered armpits and nose, painted fingers and toes, trowelled on moustache bleach and spatulaed off depilatory creams. Then, finally, I shook out the lingerie I’d bought (with Cal fiercely guarding the changing room), threaded myself into the tight lace teddy, took a deep breath and dared to glance into the mirror.
Due to the pleasure of breast-feeding two children (thank you Penelope Leach), my boobs were like day-old party balloons with all the air leaked out. The most popular technique for flat-chested women to make themselves look ridiculous is the ‘Wonder-bra’ – so-called because as soon as you take it off, you wonder where the hell your tits went. My boobs were now strapped up on my neck someplace, like a couple of spare double chins.
Steeling myself, I let my eyes creep cringingly downwards. Well, it looked like that weed-whacker Hugo gave me was finally going to come in handy. A pelt of pubic growth sprouted from each leg hole. It was amazing my pudenda hadn’t been awarded National Park status. Snapping open the crotch press-studs, I immediately took to my pubes with a pair of the kids’ project scissors shouting ‘Timber!’ Ten minutes later I sneaked another look. Now my entire vulva just looked ragged. Oh, my God! And one of the pubes was grey! I cropped closer still. Soon the general effect was of a moulting shag rug. Frantic, I kept on trimming and shaping. Now my spiky fanny resembled a sea creature disturbed in a rock pool and prepared to attack. It gave ‘bad hair day’ a whole new meaning.
My eyes slid lower. Oh, God! My thighs were spilling over two black stocking tops like lava from a fresh volcano. Flinging the teddy floorwards, I tore off the nylons. Unfortunately, what lay beneath was acres of white flesh. Luckily, by rummaging in the bathroom cabinet, I found an old bottle of fast tan. While the kids yapped around me, demanding to know why their fingers and nostrils had to be kept apart when they so obviously fitted and whether sneezes were really ‘your soul trying to escape’, I slapped and slurped the tan on to my anaemic skin. There, that would do the trick.
But forty minutes or so later (after I’d explained to Jamie that only his Aunt Vicky was allowed to pick her nose – and then only from a catalogue and postulated with Julia on the theological concept of after-life) what had seemed richly Mediterranean in the privacy of my own bathroom had begun to look Rajhneeshi under the bright rays of late-afternoon sun. In fact, my ‘tan’ pulsated. It radiated – but more tandoori than tanning salon. I looked as if I was wearing a tangerine wet-suit, with darker elbow patches, knee-pads and ankle straps.
Heart palpitating, I checked the time. Six forty-five. Hugo would be home in fifteen minutes. After I had packed the children off to Cal’s next door garden to shoot some hoops and horse around, I frantically pumiced myself with a nailbrush while panic gnawed at my insides. No luck. I took to my poor body with a pot-scourer, exfoliating myself down to a pretzel. Still no improvement. Followed by a sand blaster. But still nothing. Just orange. I looked like a distress flare. People could employ me at the scene of a boating accident.
Oh, boy, did I feel sexy now. It was clear that I was soon going to be mastering The Kama Sutra For One. In desperation I reached for the sex aids. The benwah-balls brochure promised orgasmic bliss. But what it didn’t say was that inserting these chrome bowling balls would be like childbirth, only backwards. And with no epidural. And once I’d put them in, would I ever get them out again? If not, I was in for the most embarrassing airport security metal detector search ever. By the time I gave up, panting and exasperated, I was so depleted with exhaustion that I had to eat the banana-flavoured erecto-gel.
With the sound of my husband’s key grating in the lock, I leapt on to the bed to lie sensuously among pillows that I now noticed were splattered with squashed chicken nuggets. Eyes darting urgently downwards for a final check, I saw that my bright orange body was decorated in tiny handprints from where the kids had been clambering up me earlier. A trail of little paw marks had developed with Polaroid speed up both legs. Even stranger, I seemed to have hirsute toenails. Oh, God! My pube trimmings had fallen into the wet nail polish and dried there. As much as I yanked and pulled, they remained cement-rendered. So much for being ‘alluring’ and ‘sensual’! Distressed, I shoved my mohair feet under the sheet, which I tugged up over my puckered, baby-marked belly. I could hear Hugo’s step on the stair; he always came straight up to change out of his suit. Perspiration was beading my top lip. Dry of mouth, I licked my lips – only to discover I was still wearing moustache bleach. Dry-retching from the poisonous taste, I wiped it with the nearest thing to hand – which I identified too late as my expensive new lingerie. But then I gawked into the bedside mirror to see that the bleach had been on so long it had turned my top lip albino. It neoned out at me from my reflection – an iridescent white. Bloody hell! I also had a stress pimple erupting on my nose. Now there’s a good look – wrinkles and pimples. Thank you, God. To complete the seductive image, I then noticed a nasty underarm shaving rash. Worse, although I’d hidden my aggressive sea creature in a pair of delicate silk scanties, the spikes were poking through. Jesus! My pubic hairs could now shred a man, like Parmesan on a cheese grater.
I ripped off the scanties and balled them up behind the bed. By the time Hugo’s hand was on the door-knob, I was in such a panic I was tempted to drink the nail-polish remover with which I was desperately attempting to scrub off the pubed toe-varnish.
Get a grip, girl. My husband loved me because I was the loyal and devoted mother of his children, goddamn it. I suspected that the Texan Pant-snake Charmer had probably asked him to Tell Me Where It Hurts, so I needed to be fierce in pointing out that my adoration was not based on infatuation but on feelings that had grown during a real, in-sickness-and-in-oh-God-not-the-flu-again? relationship. I had to let him feel that, yes, I could live without him – because hey, I was a vibrant, independent career woman (despite the temporary set-back of being unemployed). But also that I’d definitely rather not. Needing him was not the same as being ‘needy.’
I clutched the erecto gel, which promised to ‘animate the phallus’. In just moments my Hugo’s penis would be so damn animated it would be signed up by a cartoon network.
I parted my lips into a warm and welcoming smile, lit up my eyes with love, vibrantly arranged my facial muscles into an independent-yet-needy look and turned to face my darling, dearest husband …
‘Yeah. They provide so many hours of harmless entertainment for the rest of us.’ And with that, I took my cellulite and my crinkles and stomped the hell out of there.
‘Let’s see if you feel that way once you turn forty,’ she called out after me.
‘Once and for all, forty is not old,’ I tossed over my shoulder.
‘Only women who are about to turn forty say that. It’s a terrible age. TOO OLD TO LAMBADA, TOO YOUNG TO DIE.’
* * *
All the way to BBC Television Centre, I massaged my poor, battered ego. I had lived. I had learned. I’d had experiences. I had earned these crows’ feet, goddamn it! Isn’t experience as valuable, in professional terms, as having young skin?
Yeah, right. And Cher is ageing naturally.
The first blow to my fragile confidence came when I dashed into the doughnut-shaped building known as the Beeb to find myself being taken aside by the production team – Raphael, Crusoe and Dweezil. (It was like working for the Ninja Turtles.) They were PR-ed, upstart, X-generationers (as in X-tremely arrogant), who could pat you on your back to your face while kicking you in your face to your back. Raphael was sorry, he palavered, that I’d missed that morning’s meeting because there had been a long discussion about ‘image’ during which it was decided that I should be shifted from the prime-time slot and replaced by a blow-waved anchorman recently poached from Channel 5.
At first I presumed it was just another instance of There But For the Genetalia Go I.
But no. His appeal, Raphael insisted, was not that he had balls, but that he had what the producer called ‘TVQ’ – Televisual Quotient. In other words, he was young.
I felt a brittle, crumbling sensation inside. ‘Why? Does it make the news any better?’ The office was open plan and all my colleagues were periscoping over their flimsy, carpeted partitions, straining to overhear the conversation.
‘I’m being demoted for someone prettier!’ I announced to them all, as I tried in vain to lasso my extravagant tendrils of hair back into a ponytail.
‘Demoted is such a negative little word, yeah?’ the acned Raphael condescended, sucking on a pen that was probably twice as big as his dick. ‘Think of it more as a staff feng shui. We could offer you Playschool? That whole mum thing. You can relate to that, yeah?’
Despite the profound sense of loss engulfing me, I squared my shoulders. ‘Screw you and the ageist policy change you rode in on. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’d like to go and spend some more quality time with my wrinkles.’
Which is why I left pretty much as I’d arrived – fired with enthusiasm.
I know you’d have to be a Trappist vegan celibate not to get hurt in Life, but losing my hubby and my job in twenty-four hours did seem one visit too many from the Fuck-up Fairy. Bumper-to-bumpering back along Euston Road, arms clenched around the steering-wheel, I tried to contain the anguish I felt inside. I rang my sister and ascertained her location – a shabby photo graphic studio in Camden. I drove straight there to find her erotically draped over a couple of seventy-year-old men wearing cardigans.
‘What the hell are you advertising?’
‘Viagra. It was all the agency could get me. Now do you understand why I need to be rescued by something tall, dark and Sven-like?’
‘Well, don’t give any Viagra to Sven. He’ll only get taller,’ I said caustically.
‘Ha bloody ha. So what’s up?’
When I’d numbly reported the change in my employment status, her voice shivered. ‘Christ, Elisabeth. Well, you really can’t afford to lose your husband now. If you’re not going to improve your looks, then you’d better get bloody good in bed.’
A hollow laugh escaped my lips. ‘Hugo and I’ve been together for eleven years. To us, “good in bed” means not snoring, farting or taking all the covers.’
‘Really? I always thought Hugo might be quite imaginative in the sack.’ She paused to pout for the camera, looking exactly like one of those tribal women on the Discovery Channel with plates in their bottom lip. She really should have been advertising tableware. ‘Has the passion really gone?’
‘Put it this way, my birthday present was a weed-whacker.’
‘A weed-whacker? Bloody hell. Then you have got to get more creative in bed.’
‘What are you suggesting? Origami?’
‘No! Toys, games, fantasies, French ticklers, benwah balls, banana-flavoured erecto-gel … Become alluring and sensual. Sex keeps you young. And it’s terribly good for your complexion.’
All the way home up Haverstock Hill (and much to the amusement of other motorists), I practised alluring and sensual facial expressions in the rear-view mirror. After a particularly jubilant response from a group of schoolboys at the traffic lights I rang Vicky back. ‘Posing provocatively in latex lederhosen is not the way to intrigue a husband like mine. Think about it. What first captivated him? My composure while under fire. I was too shell-shocked to fight with him last night. If I can just keep my dignity and not get all desperate …’ the car moaned around the corner of my cobbled street ‘… Hugo will have enough space to take a fresh look at me, to remember what he loved about me in the first bloody place. I mean, what could be more attractive to an errant husband, I ask you, than a cool, in-control wife?’
It was then that I crashed into the red pillar-box. I wasn’t hurt, but the sheer shock of it made me slump over the wheel and sob uncontrollably. A blur of raggedness tumbling through the passenger side door slowly resolved into the shambolic shape of Calim.
‘Jaysus. Are you okay?’
‘I’m having a pulmonary embolism, but apart from that …’
‘What’s goin’ on?’
‘Oh, nothing much. I’ve lost my job and … and my sister just told me that I have the erotic appeal of a dental-floss dispenser.’
He grinned coyly, rummaging through his pockets for a crumpled tissue. ‘J’know what men really find excitin’ in bed? A woman who’s confident enough to enjoy sex … and you’re a confident woman, Lizzie.’
I blew my nose. ‘You’ve been to say-the-right-thing school, haven’t you, Cal?’
‘But it is true, Lizzie. Bein’ sexy is more to do with bein’ at ease with your body than anythin’ else. I don’t know any woman with a perfect body … but I know loads of sexy ones. A woman who’s really juiced up, whatever her shape, is more erotic than a woman who walks backwards out of bedrooms.’
Like airbags in a car, sensitivity in a man is an optional extra. And Cal was clearly top of the range. I squeezed his arm. ‘Are you sure you’re not gay?’
‘Hey, I’m so in touch with my feminine side I’m startin’ to complain about me wobbly thighs. Lemme help you out of there.’
Since the driver’s door was wedged up against the post-box, I had to slide across the console. It was then, to add insult to injury, that I got impaled on the gear lever. The symbolism proved too much for me. ‘Hugo … was … unfaithful.’ I started sobbing again.
Cal reeled. ‘No! Who with?’
‘Britney … I can’t even put her name in my mouth, I mean you never know where it’s been. The Artist Formerly Known as Slut.’
‘Amore? Britney Amore? Christ almighty.’
‘Yes. The actress from Genital Hospital. I walked in on them. He said it was just a kiss, but his hand was between her legs. She was naked. And I’m pretty sure his fly was at half-mast. I couldn’t tell if he was zipping it down, or – or zipping it up.’
My mobile phone shrieked. It was Jamie’s teacher, Ms Savage, reminding me that I’d promised to go on the afternoon excursion to the British Museum. ‘You signed the return slip and tore along the dotted line at the bottom,’ she reminded me sternly.
‘School,’ I said, staggering out of the car. ‘Excursion. I forgot.’
‘Tell her you can’t go. Tell her you’re a meningitis carrier.’
‘Only a certificate of death – a recent one – would be an acceptable excuse for Ms Savage. Could you drive me?’
Hampstead is built on one of the few high hills in London. The sunshine had vapourized and the city below us had become so grey it looked veiled in gauze – a perfect meteorological match for my mood. In minutes the sky darkened and a passing storm shattered on to the streets. Puddles hissed beneath car tyres. Cal pulled me into his battered Volkswagen with the the bumper bar sticker ‘Who cares who’s on board?’ On the dashboard was a hand-scribbled note declaring, ‘No radio. Already stolen.’
‘I’m going to stick a sign on Hugo,’ I said, ‘reading, “This is not an abandoned husband”.’
‘Obviously,’ Cal said, trying to concertina his six-foot frame behind the wheel, ‘I’m only drivin’ this wee car to prove that I have an enormous cock. You do understand that, right?’
As he contorted into the driver’s seat, I lectured myself quite sternly. It was no good looking for my self-esteem in Lost Property. I could compete with that Slutcicle. I had a vivid, quirky imagination. Whereas Britney was a No-brow. She was ninety-eight per cent personality free. She was Bimbo-lite. One week and he’d be sick of the bland taste of her. Whereas I was a complex carbo of a woman. A nourishing, filling, well-balanced meal. I could make Wildean epigrams. Do cryptic crosswords. I knew the square root of the hypotenuse. She, on the other hand, was nothing more than a mattress with breasts – something to lie down on while having a shag – president of the Vaginal Discharge Self-Help Group. Our relationship was based on more than just tawdry sex. We had a deep commitment. Goddamn it. I was a return-slip-tear-along-the-dotted-line-at-the-bottom signer! I was not going to degrade myself by trying to compete with the likes of her. It was good in a marriage to create a little intrigue, but that didn’t mean greeting my husband at the door in edible undies.
Cal finally squeezed into take-off position and shook his mad hair. Water drops flew off his curls like spangled jewels. As he careered down the street, contenting himself by making helpful corrective gestures at other drivers, I felt a rekindled faith in my husband. I’d overreacted. Birthday blues had made me feel vulnerable, that was all. Maybe it really was just a kiss. And what was that, after all? Just the anatomical juxtaposition of two orbicularis oris muscles in a state of contraction. It was clear that Britney Amore was nothing more than a fly on the windscreen of my life.
Awash with relief I rang Hugo to tell him how much I loved him. The hospital said he’d gone home for lunch. I rang the cleaner. She said Hugo had called to say he’d be staying late at the hospital.
We were outside Jamie’s school gates. ‘Where to now, ma’am?’ Cal asked, doffing an imaginary hat.
‘A whip emporium. Pronto. I need to buy benwah balls, banana-flavoured erecto gel, French ticklers and a vibrator with forward and reverse gears.’
Another thing a worldly, smart thirty-nine-year-old woman needs to know: up against a Sex Goddess, principles and profundity are about as useful as a eunuch at a whipped-cream orgy.
5
If I Can’t Have It All, Can I At Least Have Some of Hers?
THE FEMALE ORGASM is more of a mystery than the continued career success of George W. Bush. But, by God, I was determined to have one with my husband. An Academy award-winning one – better than any two-bit telly actress could pull off.
After a quick detour to a sex shop called Ssssh, Cal had dropped me, late, at the British Museum so I could go into Mother Mode. We got home from collecting Julia to find a message on the answering machine from Hugo, saying he’d be back at seven. I consulted my watch. That gave me one and a half hours. In between burning chicken nuggets and checking maths homework, I ran to the bathroom, showered and shampooed. I pffted with that spray and pffted with another, powdered armpits and nose, painted fingers and toes, trowelled on moustache bleach and spatulaed off depilatory creams. Then, finally, I shook out the lingerie I’d bought (with Cal fiercely guarding the changing room), threaded myself into the tight lace teddy, took a deep breath and dared to glance into the mirror.
Due to the pleasure of breast-feeding two children (thank you Penelope Leach), my boobs were like day-old party balloons with all the air leaked out. The most popular technique for flat-chested women to make themselves look ridiculous is the ‘Wonder-bra’ – so-called because as soon as you take it off, you wonder where the hell your tits went. My boobs were now strapped up on my neck someplace, like a couple of spare double chins.
Steeling myself, I let my eyes creep cringingly downwards. Well, it looked like that weed-whacker Hugo gave me was finally going to come in handy. A pelt of pubic growth sprouted from each leg hole. It was amazing my pudenda hadn’t been awarded National Park status. Snapping open the crotch press-studs, I immediately took to my pubes with a pair of the kids’ project scissors shouting ‘Timber!’ Ten minutes later I sneaked another look. Now my entire vulva just looked ragged. Oh, my God! And one of the pubes was grey! I cropped closer still. Soon the general effect was of a moulting shag rug. Frantic, I kept on trimming and shaping. Now my spiky fanny resembled a sea creature disturbed in a rock pool and prepared to attack. It gave ‘bad hair day’ a whole new meaning.
My eyes slid lower. Oh, God! My thighs were spilling over two black stocking tops like lava from a fresh volcano. Flinging the teddy floorwards, I tore off the nylons. Unfortunately, what lay beneath was acres of white flesh. Luckily, by rummaging in the bathroom cabinet, I found an old bottle of fast tan. While the kids yapped around me, demanding to know why their fingers and nostrils had to be kept apart when they so obviously fitted and whether sneezes were really ‘your soul trying to escape’, I slapped and slurped the tan on to my anaemic skin. There, that would do the trick.
But forty minutes or so later (after I’d explained to Jamie that only his Aunt Vicky was allowed to pick her nose – and then only from a catalogue and postulated with Julia on the theological concept of after-life) what had seemed richly Mediterranean in the privacy of my own bathroom had begun to look Rajhneeshi under the bright rays of late-afternoon sun. In fact, my ‘tan’ pulsated. It radiated – but more tandoori than tanning salon. I looked as if I was wearing a tangerine wet-suit, with darker elbow patches, knee-pads and ankle straps.
Heart palpitating, I checked the time. Six forty-five. Hugo would be home in fifteen minutes. After I had packed the children off to Cal’s next door garden to shoot some hoops and horse around, I frantically pumiced myself with a nailbrush while panic gnawed at my insides. No luck. I took to my poor body with a pot-scourer, exfoliating myself down to a pretzel. Still no improvement. Followed by a sand blaster. But still nothing. Just orange. I looked like a distress flare. People could employ me at the scene of a boating accident.
Oh, boy, did I feel sexy now. It was clear that I was soon going to be mastering The Kama Sutra For One. In desperation I reached for the sex aids. The benwah-balls brochure promised orgasmic bliss. But what it didn’t say was that inserting these chrome bowling balls would be like childbirth, only backwards. And with no epidural. And once I’d put them in, would I ever get them out again? If not, I was in for the most embarrassing airport security metal detector search ever. By the time I gave up, panting and exasperated, I was so depleted with exhaustion that I had to eat the banana-flavoured erecto-gel.
With the sound of my husband’s key grating in the lock, I leapt on to the bed to lie sensuously among pillows that I now noticed were splattered with squashed chicken nuggets. Eyes darting urgently downwards for a final check, I saw that my bright orange body was decorated in tiny handprints from where the kids had been clambering up me earlier. A trail of little paw marks had developed with Polaroid speed up both legs. Even stranger, I seemed to have hirsute toenails. Oh, God! My pube trimmings had fallen into the wet nail polish and dried there. As much as I yanked and pulled, they remained cement-rendered. So much for being ‘alluring’ and ‘sensual’! Distressed, I shoved my mohair feet under the sheet, which I tugged up over my puckered, baby-marked belly. I could hear Hugo’s step on the stair; he always came straight up to change out of his suit. Perspiration was beading my top lip. Dry of mouth, I licked my lips – only to discover I was still wearing moustache bleach. Dry-retching from the poisonous taste, I wiped it with the nearest thing to hand – which I identified too late as my expensive new lingerie. But then I gawked into the bedside mirror to see that the bleach had been on so long it had turned my top lip albino. It neoned out at me from my reflection – an iridescent white. Bloody hell! I also had a stress pimple erupting on my nose. Now there’s a good look – wrinkles and pimples. Thank you, God. To complete the seductive image, I then noticed a nasty underarm shaving rash. Worse, although I’d hidden my aggressive sea creature in a pair of delicate silk scanties, the spikes were poking through. Jesus! My pubic hairs could now shred a man, like Parmesan on a cheese grater.
I ripped off the scanties and balled them up behind the bed. By the time Hugo’s hand was on the door-knob, I was in such a panic I was tempted to drink the nail-polish remover with which I was desperately attempting to scrub off the pubed toe-varnish.
Get a grip, girl. My husband loved me because I was the loyal and devoted mother of his children, goddamn it. I suspected that the Texan Pant-snake Charmer had probably asked him to Tell Me Where It Hurts, so I needed to be fierce in pointing out that my adoration was not based on infatuation but on feelings that had grown during a real, in-sickness-and-in-oh-God-not-the-flu-again? relationship. I had to let him feel that, yes, I could live without him – because hey, I was a vibrant, independent career woman (despite the temporary set-back of being unemployed). But also that I’d definitely rather not. Needing him was not the same as being ‘needy.’
I clutched the erecto gel, which promised to ‘animate the phallus’. In just moments my Hugo’s penis would be so damn animated it would be signed up by a cartoon network.
I parted my lips into a warm and welcoming smile, lit up my eyes with love, vibrantly arranged my facial muscles into an independent-yet-needy look and turned to face my darling, dearest husband …
