In Bed with Jocasta (14 page)

T
he baby club, and sometimes the two-baby club, is gaining plenty of new celebrity members. Demi Moore, Madonna and Annette Bening, among others. A few years back even Michael Jackson was achieving fatherhood — a conception presumably designed to defy
pre
-conceptions.

Babies, it now seems, are the latest fashion accessory for Hollywood stars — the perfect reaction either to that fading career, or to those troublesome allegations.

But, for stars, the experience of bringing up baby is surely a little different to the norm — right from the moment they first book into the LA birth centre, that cervix station to the stars.

Celebrity parents are suddenly everywhere, but could you qualify? Try our quick quiz.

When my baby cries out, I usually awaken:

(a) immediately;

(b) almost immediately;

(c) after a few moments;

(d) the nanny and the rest of her night staff.

I define a child restraint as:

(a) a car seat;

(b) a baby capsule;

(c) a condom;

(d) the electric fence between the nanny’s cottage and the main residence.

The first photos of my baby were taken:

(a) on his rug;

(b) in the bath;

(c) at the hospital;

(d) from my bag by the nanny, and then sold to
New Idea.

When I was pregnant, I always appeared:

(a) very tired;

(b) quite bloated;

(c) a little flushed;

(d) stark naked on the cover of
Vanity Fair.

My spare time is constantly spent expressing:

(a) milk;

(b) myself.

I see my child as a way of gaining more:

(a) meaning in my life;

(b) joy in small things;

(c) balance between work and play;

(d) cheap publicity.

How often does your child wear you out?

(a) never, I’m the complete mother;

(b) sometimes, especially when he’s teething;

(c) always — I’m a wreck;

(d) I’m sorry, there must be some mistake: nanny dresses him in blue, I wear pink, the paparazzi gather … and I wear
him
out.

I’m working hard to get my child to establish his own routine:

(a) at bedtime;

(b) at mealtime;

(c) at bathtime;

(d) at Caesar’s Palace.

By the time he’s two years old, I’d love to see my child moving:

(a) his legs and arms;

(b) his facial muscles;

(c) his neck;

(d) into his own condo.

I define ‘gross motor skills’ as the moment my child:

(a) grasped a pencil;

(b) lifted a spoon;

(c) connected some Lego;

(d) threw up in the back of the limo.

If my child does anything wrong, I force him to spend time:

(a) standing in the corner;

(b) sitting in his room;

(c) thinking at his desk;

(d) dining back in economy.

I never leave home without my:

(a) nappy bag;

(b) travel cot;

(c) baby wipes;

(d) entourage.

This is a child conceived:

(a) in a moment of passion;

(b) on the back seat of a Holden;

(c) because of a life commitment;

(d) by my press agent.

The last time my child ate all his dinner, I was in a state:

(a) of bliss;

(b) of relief;

(c) of smug parental satisfaction;

(d) somewhere in the Midwest. Probably Idaho. On the new Coen brothers film.

In attempting toilet training, I always:

(a) let him choose his own time;

(b) put him on the toilet and wait;

(c) use small bribes;

(d) cheer when anything happens — it’s always been the reaction to my own, very similar, productions.

Scoring:
Score four points for every (d) answer. In this quiz, as in life, it’s pretty easy for a Hollywood star to score.

I
should have known it was too good to be true. Standing at the ironing board at around 10.00 p.m., while Jocasta sprayed unspeakable chemicals at the shower recess, I finally spotted the white plastic bottom of the ironing basket.

It was quite a surprise, coming across it like this, after so many years. A door opened; an opportunity beckoned. I was one spotty shirt off achieving the unthinkable: a household in which there was no ironing waiting to be done.

Teenagers may have different fantasies, but later it comes down to this: that, just once, you could iron
everything.
But the fantasy goes further, gets wilder. If you could just defeat the ironing, you tell yourself, the rest of your domestic life might somehow slot back into control. You’d be organised. You’d be triumphant. Master of the Recycling Pile. Controller of Shower-Stall Scunge. Lord of all Toilet Ducks.

Of course, tomorrow there’ll be more ironing, great straggling piles of it, heaved in off the line. But for one night, tonight, it will disappear — the stack of laundry baskets, perched one atop the other, that tottering mountain of reproach.

It’s not only the washing which seems ready to engulf us. In the modern household, Chaos always seems to lurk about the porch, just waiting for its chance to invade. In the 21st-century household — a couple of incomes, a couple of kids, everything mortgaged to the hilt — the aim each week is merely to crawl across the line.

It’s Saturday morning. The children haven’t been arrested. Everyone’s been fed something. There have been no major outbreaks of disease. The whole family’s done a fantastic job.

But if you miss a single household job — if you lose attention just for a night — the whole edifice will surely come tumbling down. You’ll be catapulted into the land of the Midnight Iron. Suddenly, Chaos will be on top of you, holding you down while you’re kicking and wriggling on the ground. The margarine will have run out; the gas company will have cut off all supplies; stacks of ironing will be blocking all exits.

And Jocasta, defeated, will spend her evenings staring maniacally at the juice-stained couch. (Vainly does she threaten it with a pump-pack of fabric cleaner long since run dry.)

And so, to recover from our pathetic state, we must stay up late. Make an effort. Get Chaos back outside the door. Which is why we held the special extension to this Tuesday’s Festival of the Iron (held concurrently with the weekly Adoration of the Bathroom).

Somewhere around 10.00 p.m., I find myself tackling Jocasta’s spotty shirt. I’m taking my time with it, flicking the iron over it with an insouciant flourish. I’m looking forward to the moment when I march into the bathroom and hook the empty basket towards Jocasta, proclaiming my triumph with a thumping of my chest.
All three ironing baskets emptied!
Her very own Iron Man.

Then it happens. No, not an exploding iron. No, not a shirt that turns out to be rayon and bursts into flames. Defeat wears more mundane colours.

Jocasta, cleaning out the laundry, discovers we don’t actually have three ironing baskets. We have
four.
And this one’s been sitting around full for months. She walks in with it, and plonks it beside the ironing board, just as I complete the spotty shirt.

We all know what a left-to-last basket contains, don’t we? It’s the basket full of hard-to-iron items. Items sneaked in when your partner wasn’t watching — a whole basket of pirate shirts, flounced frocks, delicate fabrics, pintucks, pleats, and ruched collars.

It’s the Ironing Basket of Death. It’s the Too-Hard Basket.

Perhaps you enjoy the bold, sweeping satisfaction of ironing a tea towel? Forget it. The ease of a handkerchief? Well, not in this lot. And so, nearing midnight, we sadly record a defeat, and slump back into the arms of Chaos.

But not for long. We shall regroup, our family. We shall be courageous. And then, without exactly telling her what’s in it, we’ll try to talk Jocasta’s mother into tackling the Ironing Basket of Death.

Trying to stay afloat in the 21st century, you can’t play every battle by the rules.

Add the pretentious literary references, and
it seems clear that Jocasta thought she
was getting some sort of fey intellectual with
a cleaning fetish. Which must have been
a shock when I finally moved in with my
six weeks of dirty laundry, a Honda
step-through motorcycle and the
home-brew kit.

J
ocasta says she hopes I never cut my own leg off with a chainsaw because, if I do, she won’t be taking any notice. She’ll just be sitting inside, getting on with her First Aid by Correspondence course, ignoring the spurting blood and my frantic screams of ‘Omigod, quick, quick — I think I’m dying.’

According to Jocasta, I’ve only myself to blame. Once too often, she says, she’s heard me scream with an intensity that suggests the loss of at least one major body part, only to find me nursing a stubbed toe.

I explain to her that the pain is actually enormous — probably even worse than you’d get with a chainsaw and its nice clean cut. Then she rolls her eyes and heads back inside — presumably to add to her course notes on the topic of delusional dickheads. This makes me feel terrible. There’s nothing worse than playing for sympathy, and finding your audience has left before interval.

Anyone can be a brave little soldier, but some of us believe our partner has the right to be absolutely familiar with the extent of our distress. Which is considerable. And getting worse.

Before you’re partnered-up, you imagine the main things you’ll want from a spouse are love, friendship, income and sex. But, after a few years together, you realise these are nothing compared to the ultimate gift a spouse can give: a good hour listening to you whinge.

Sex may dwindle, but this is something we get hot for every night. Right there on the doorstep, when you both come home and share a well-decanted whine. Not just a stubbed toe. But a mean boss, and a crowded train, and a bad-tempered client.

You tell your partner how unlucky you’ve been. How put upon. How unfortunate. And the good partner always sighs, and says: ‘How horrible’ and ‘Poor you’.

It’s not love. It’s pity. And what a sweet prize it is.

When people are just getting together, they can’t risk such scenes. They might share sex, but they never take turns in a good whinge.

You can see it in the advertisements in the singles columns. When people are trying to win a partner, they advertise themselves as having a perfect life. They are lucky, strong, happy. And — in bafflingly large numbers — they are windsurfers.

After a few years of marriage, we can be more honest. We can share just how rotten we feel. There’s still the exaggeration you see in the singles ads, but now the exaggeration is running in the opposite direction. We want our partners to know what
losers
we are. We want our partners to know what a
bad catch
we have proved to be.

You can imagine if you summed up that nightly whinge in one of those singles ads:

We can only thank God that he’s found his perfect match in:

We want someone to know how rough is our journey. Who else but our partner will share the descriptions of each bump and pothole?

The trick, of course, is to take turns — and get it over quickly. The hour before dinner is when most people do it. The not-so-happy hour, when everyone’s tired and hungry and the indignities of the day are fresh in our minds.

It’s a time for competitive whingeing, where both partners try to top the other’s account of the horrors of the day. ‘So you think
you’ve
had a bad day …’; ‘So you think
your
boss is a bastard … ‘

It’s that time of the day when all the world is four years old. And, best of all, you might even have some real four-year-olds there, adding to the melee — giving you the chance to tell them to ‘Shut up and act your age.’ It’s still
daddy’s
turn at the attention-seeking behaviour.

Then, when the real children are in bed, you can grow up yourselves, and start being adults together — warm and secure in the sweet embrace of your partner’s abiding pity.

I
t’s time for Australia’s Annual Straights and Squares Mardi Gras, and what a great turnout it is — parading up the main street of your suburb. Let’s see if we can spot some of the floats.