Nip n tuck, p.6
Nip 'n' Tuck, page 6
6
You Turn Me On Like a Cuisinart, Baby
‘OH, FANCY A quickie, do we?’ my husband said, in a voice meant to discourage.
‘As opposed to what?’ I retaliated, hurt. (This was not going to plan. I was supposed to be demure and desirable.)
‘I knew you’d get all vindictive about last night. It wasn’t my fault.’ He flumped on to the edge of the bed to shuck off his shoes. ‘The woman threw herself at me.’
I groaned. ‘Men always think women are hot for them. You could be stabbing a man repeatedly with a carving knife in the cardio-artery-vascular thingo and he’d still be thinking, Oh, wow, she really fancies me!’
He tugged impatiently at his tie, wrenching it from around his neck. ‘I fell prey to her transient glitter and I’m sorry,’ he said wearily. ‘But that kiss meant nothing to me. I love you, Lizzie.’ But his voice seemed thin and diffident.
‘Huh! You only love yourself, Hugo Frazer. When you come, you call out your own name!’ (Oh, good one, Lizzie. I was obviously a graduate of the Andrea Dworkin School of Desirability.)
It was his turn to bristle. ‘So, what are you saying exactly? That I have a big ego?’
‘Oh, is that what’s blocking out the sun?’ I shielded my eyes and squinted melodramatically.
‘I’m trying to be emotionally honest. I thought you women liked men who’re in touch with their feminine sides?’
‘Yeah, as long as it’s not on another female.’ I couldn’t help the bitterness in my voice. I’d wanted to be digni-bloody-fied, but anger was bubbling up and beginning to haemorrhage all over our oak-panelled sleigh bed. We were obviously having the fight I’d been too stunned to have the previous night. ‘By the way, it would be nice if you used some imagination in bed now and then.’
‘Oh, you mean I should imagine it’s good?’ He turned his back on me to peel off his pinstriped trousers.
I was crushed. ‘Are you insinuating that I’m not good in bed? Maybe I should go and get a second opinion.’ I squirmed in embarrassment as Hugo tossed back the sheet. My whole pudenda looked like Astroturf. You could play mini-golf down there.
But worse than him noticing was that he didn’t. He hadn’t even clocked that his wife was orange.
‘No.’ He sighed, yawning elaborately. ‘You’re a very proficient lover.’ Lying down, he gave my thigh the kind of perfunctory pat you’d give an old family pet.
‘Proficient!’ I reeled back as though he’d poured acid all over my body. ‘Proficient? The Nazi invasion of Belgium was proficient.’
‘Well …’ he groped verbally ‘… reliable then.’
‘Reliable? That’s worse. Mussolini’s trains were reliable.’
‘Well, reliable as in every Friday.’
‘I’m too tired the rest of the week!’ I counterattacked, turning my back on him and curling up into the foetal position. ‘Looking after your children. I’m the one who attends the school assemblies to hear the reports on ‘energetic events and their ergs’. I’m the one constantly reeking of Plasticine.’
‘That’s just an excuse and you know it. The big secret is just how much married women hate sex. That’s the great thing about having a baby, you don’t have to make love for months afterwards. To most wives “sexual freedom” means the freedom not to have sex. “Not tonight darling, I’m Having It All in the morning.” ’
‘I don’t know why I bother to take precautions.’ I extracted my diaphragm in one dextrous move and slapped it on to the side table. ‘I mean, an oral contraceptive is a conversation with you, Hugo.’ I threw myself out of bed and into my old silk dressing-gown, recalling, with a pang, the lace panties I’d bought for what I’d intended to be an erotic encounter.
Hugo hauled his bulk to a sitting position on the side of the bed. I noticed, dismayed, that he hadn’t bothered to take off his socks and vest. A gloomy silence descended on the bedroom. A dismal picture of the Slough of Married Despond mocked us from the mirror above the mantelpiece. ‘If our marriage was a restaurant, we’d be in the non-smoking, vegan-only section …’ I sighed … ‘unlike the All-You-Can-Eat-For-Free-Finger Buffet you devoured at the party last night.’
‘Let’s not fight, darling.’ He moved towards me. ‘It was nothing more than a pheromonal incident … Are the kids at Cal’s?’
‘Yes … A what?’
‘Pheromones. A hormonal smell that stampedes your glands and demands that you kiss that woman immediately.’
I eyed him glacially. ‘Couldn’t you just breathe through your mouth?’
Hugo spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘Men are trapped, Lizzie. Deep within the cortex of a man’s brain …’ now his warm, capable hands were kneading my knotted shoulders ‘… instantaneous judgements are made to ensure that we respond to beauty.’ He undid my old dressing-gown then placed his penis in my palm as methodically as he’d hand a scalpel to a surgical nurse. ‘And, yes, such behaviour is cruel and shallow, but it’s momentary, instantly regretted and, most importantly, not our fault.’ He moaned in expectation as I knelt down.
I cupped my husband’s splendid penis in two hands and addressed it wistfully. ‘What was a nice thing like you doing in a slut like that?’
‘I wasn’t in anybody. She was having trouble with her zip. That skirt was so tight it could only be removed by a surgical procedure.’
‘Oh! How convenient! And there you were with your bedside manner. How could you, Hugo!’ I stood up, letting go of my old friend. ‘That woman’s so man-handled, so fingered, so pawed, she could be exhibit A in the forensics department of Scotland Yard!’
‘Kissing’s not that big a deal, is it? I mean, for Christ’s sake, these things happen every day.’
‘Yes … in Las Vegas!’ I harrumphed to the bed and flopped back down on it. ‘A kiss, Dr Frazer, is a contraction of the mouth due to an engorgement of the dick.’
‘Oh, listen!’ Hugo cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Do you hear that yelping noise? Oh, wait. It’s just you, barking up the wrong tree.’
‘Yelping?’ I withered. ‘Hey, if you want to get rid of me, throw a stick. Obviously I’ll run after it. Let’s see if I can catch a frisbee with my teeth.’
Hugo rubbed his furrowed brow as he followed me back to bed. ‘Why does a woman always misconstrue innocuous statements to mean her husband wants to be rid of her?’
‘Oh, so that’s what Britney is – an innocuous statement?’
‘God, I don’t know.’ His hand was on my nipple rolling it half-heartedly between forefinger and thumb. ‘I don’t know why I did it, Liz. Maybe I’m having a midlife crisis.’
‘Well, you’re definitely giving me one.’
‘It is well documented, dearest – the medical phenomenon of the male menopause.’ He ran his hands soothingly down my body and between my legs, spreading my lips with the deft precision of a gynaecologist undertaking a routine cervical smear. ‘The craving for emotional intensity, the desire for heart-fluttering human drama …’
‘Couldn’t you have just gone whitewater rafting? Male midlife crisis! What a load of crap. It’s nothing more then ovulation envy.’
‘Please forgive me,’ he begged penitentially. If his voice had had legs it would have been on its knees. ‘I’m really, really sorry. You’re the only woman in the world for me.’ He picked up my diaphragm, folded it in half like a letter and posted it between my parted thighs.
But jealousy had sidled in and taken up residency. ‘What really upsets me is how you could fancy her. I mean, the woman has the cognitive ability of – of limp lettuce.’
‘Generous mammaries don’t necessarily mean she’s a bimbo,’ he said defensively, stroking my thighs.
‘And just to establish that she’s not a bimbo, she’s chosen to appear nude in various men’s magazines.’
‘Only Playboy, darling,’ he teased my clitoris with his fingers, ‘and they interviewed her because she is actually disarmingly intelligent.’
‘Meaning she faked rapt attention while you bull-shitted on,’ I decoded, fuming as I rolled away from him.
‘She seemed very interested in my work … and, she’s written a book.’
‘What kind of book?’ I looked at him amazed.
‘A cookbook.’
I laughed violently, convulsively. ‘An actress who’s written a cookbook? What does it say: “Take fingers, put down throat, regurgitate”? “Take one line of cocaine, place on paper, snort”?’
‘She’s going to give you a copy—’
‘I bet it lists the calorific value of sperm from various movie moguls. The Casting-couch Special,’ I hooted.
‘—when she comes for dinner,’ he interjected, tentatively, propping his head on his folded arms. ‘The week after next.’
I leant up on one elbow and gawped at him, uncomprehending. ‘Dial-A-Mattress is coming to dinner? And when exactly did you issue this invitation?’
‘When I rang Sven today – to discuss a project – she answered.’
‘Listen,’ I said stonily, ‘just because I’ve lost my job doesn’t mean I’m going to become a professional wife.’
‘You lost your job? Why?’
I hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. ‘I’m too old,’ I grieved, my bravado evaporating. ‘Apparently they’re tearing down buildings that are younger than me.’ I clutched a pillow to my abdomen. ‘Next time I get on a bus, the driver will offer me his seat.’
‘Darling, that’s preposterous. I’m appalled. Tell me what happened.’
‘Anyway, why on earth would you be interested in any of Sven’s projects?’ I probed suspiciously, but the fight had gone out of me. The crushing humiliation of losing my job had left me limp as an eighties perm in a sauna.
‘It’s a business proposition he put to me at the party last night.’
‘What business?’
‘Sven’s agency is going to donate some money to my charity for landmine victims …’ His eyes shifted, evasively. ‘And anyway, we need a little “lifestyle surgery”, you and I, starting with some entertaining. It may have slipped your attention, darling, but I am a highly respected surgeon. I need to be part of a “power couple”. Plugged into the social socket. When we first met you were so dynamic! Maybe losing your job is a blessing in disguise. You could devote your energies to becoming one of London’s leading hostesses. A Domestic Goddess. A Trophy Wife!’
I looked at him aghast. Oh, where was my husband? My lovely, gentle man? My steady, wise and witty Hugo? The holder of the World Indoor Record for Lovely Husbandliness?
‘As a couple we could give credibility to an idea Sven has had for a … health clinic.’
‘A what?’
The phone rang then – something to do with an airlift of Chechnyan children who needed immediate surgery – and, moments later, Hugo was reinstated in his suit and headed back to the hospital. ‘Have a think about the cuisine,’ he called, from half-way down the stairs.
I tugged the blankets over my head. Anxieties clung to me like a wet shower curtain. He wanted me to be a suave and dynamic dinner-party hostess? Just on the very day I’d become a newly signed-up member of Losers Anonymous? Why didn’t I become a sophisticated ‘Trophy Wife’? A ‘Domestic Goddess’? Why didn’t he just plop on to some shore and evolve?
Bugger it, there was no way I would play little wifey at a dinner party for her. Apart from the fact that Britney had recently devoured my husband, it should be illegal to have to cook for someone who’s written a cookbook. Anorexic women like her should be skewered on a toothpick and eaten as an hors d’oeuvre. That’s what I would tell Hugo when he got home. End world hunger – eat an actress.
Besides which, catering wasn’t my forte. (Even though I could now grate Parmesan on my pubic area.) I’d only ever once attempted anything beyond cold cuts and then I’d nearly fallen into the blender and made a crudité of myself. No bloody way would I do it. Domestic Goddesses who say they get high on housework have obviously been inhaling too much cleaning fluid. Definition of a ‘hostage’? A woman who has to cook for damn visitors.
7
When You Wish Upon A Michelin Star
THE NOTION OF wives doing all the cooking and housework is no longer publicly fashionable. But I know for a fact that it goes on behind closed doors.
Two weeks later, on a hot Sunday night in July, with the kids still not bathed and in bed, I endured the usual hostess panic that since nobody was going to turn up there’d be too much food; or if they did show they’d have new lovers or lawyers in tow so there’d be too little; or everyone would have food allergies, which would mean either insulting me by not eating my dinner or eating the meal and throwing up over each other. I called for Cal to help me with the children and catapulted back into the kitchen just in time to catch the cats stripping the last of the sesame-seeded seared tuna out of the salad. All that remained was a little sad spag and a frond or two of wilted seaweed. Any hope of cordon-bleu sensation bit the gastronomic dust.
‘Listen, Cal,’ I said, when he bounced in five minutes later to find me desperately rummaging through the freezer, ‘I’m just not up to going to your uni ball any more. Why don’t you ask Victoria?’
‘Victoria? She’d never go out with the likes of me. This modelling business your sister’s in, well, it’s all about contacts. Right? Entrée into places. Stuff like that? Well, the only entrées I’ve got access to are on a menu. Oh, sure, I can get entrée … as in prawn cocktails and canned soup. I can get the power table at McDonalds’ with a minute’s notice.’
‘That’s all right. Victoria doesn’t eat in public anyway. Models live in a state of permanent terror that they might actually develop some muscle tissue.’
When Hugo arrived to find his wife armed with a hair-dryer trying to defrost eight chicken breasts, he gave me a homicidal look. I’m not exaggerating. If looks could kill, I would have been donating my organs to medical science right there and then. Actually I wasn’t sure if he was angry about the chaos, or that I’d invited Victoria without consulting him. (Victoria would never forgive me for denying her a Close Encounter of the Sven Kind.) Hugo says my sister doesn’t visit, she invades, which she was doing right now, cascading into the kitchen in a swirl of silk scarves and duty-free bags.
‘Alcohol! Quickly!’ She seized my glass of Pinot Grigio.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I have just spent the last week modelling muumuus for drunken electrical engineers in Dubai. If Sven doesn’t marry me soon, my next gig is glamour-posing for amateur photographers in Milton Keynes.’
‘Is that so bad?’
She slumped despondently over her wineglass. ‘Darling, it’s Kosovo without the perks.’
‘I know something that will cheer you up. Cal’s planning to ask you out.’
Now it was Cal’s turn to shoot me a homicidal look. ‘Ah … yeah.’ He nervously readjusted the worn leather belt on his Levi’s 501s.
Victoria placed her manicured hands on the hips of her spray-on snakeskin trousers. ‘Put it this way, Calim,’ my sister replied, ‘if I were naked, you’d bore the pants on to me.’
‘Victoria!’ I snapped. She might have severe PMT (Post Modelling Tension), but there was no need to take it out on my best buddy.
‘Okay, so it’s no to sex,’ Cal replied gamely. ‘How ’bout some indiscriminate heavy pettin’, then?’
‘I’m not being rude.’ Victoria sighed. ‘It’s just that you’re so insignificant.’
Beet-faced, my loyal friend took a small bow. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, that last act of abject humiliation was brought to you by Calim Keane. Excuse me, but I have a date to read bedtime stories.’ He left abruptly, bounding up the stairs two at a time.
Before I could shove my half-sister down the waste-disposal unit, Victoria exclaimed, ‘I suppose the fact that Britney has rather enormous tits is a rather exasperating detail.’
‘God.’ My stomach churned. ‘Is she really so brazen that she’s actually turned up?’
‘I just passed Jabba the Slut parking her Porsche. Forget the chicken breasts, Elisabeth, and just concentrate on your own.’ She thrust her hand down my bra and hoicked my tiny tits to the top of their lace cups. ‘Leave It To Cleavage. That’s the only show men are really interested in.’
I glanced in Hugo’s direction over by the wine rack, where he was scrutinizing vintages – my husband could put the bore into Bordeaux. ‘Victoria, Hugo is not a breast man!’
On cue, the largest pair of mammaries in the northern hemisphere glided into view. It was like a photo-finish in a blancmange bake-off. The female to whom the Siamese soufflés were attached followed some five minutes later. My husband’s eyeballs pogoed out of their sockets and boinged! into her bra cups, where they gambolled around in the throes of ecstasy before boomeranging back socketwards.
‘You were saying?’ crowed my sister.
When Sven waylaid Britney with kisses on the kitchen threshold, I thought it was an opportune moment to retreat with Victoria for some tandem toilet time.
‘For God’s sake, don’t let on that you know about Britney and Hugo. He told me not to tell you. He wants me to be suave,’ I bleated, plonking my posterior on the lavatory seat. ‘I can’t be suave.’
‘Of course you can, sweetie. All you have to do is stand still and look brain-dead … Hurry up, I’m bursting.’
‘I have a degree. I can’t look brain-dead.’ I washed my hands while Victoria took her turn to pee.
‘Try winsome, then. Britney does a terrific winsome.’
‘How?’ I handed her a toilet roll.
‘You just look like a neutered dog. You keep looking at him till he pats you – and then you take his leg off. That’s my number one Useful Girlish Tip,’ she philosophized, pulling the chain. ‘The only other way to keep a man happy are a few Martha Stewart Moments in the kitchen. Oh, and some feminine mystique.’ She paused to fart before sashaying out of the bathroom. ‘Men love that.’
WANTED – Suave, sophisticated, winsome, discreet, dynamic ‘Trophy Wife’ with enormous cleavage. Must be an experienced Michelin Star cook and general Domestic Goddess, appropriate for Power Coupling. Applicants without feminine fucking mystique will not be considered.
