In Bed with Jocasta (18 page)
Read In Bed with Jocasta Online
Authors: Richard Glover
That’s why we’ve become so obsessed.
Witness the moment in the cinema — halfway through the climactic scene in Roddy Doyle’s
The Snapper.
There was the father, berating his daughter for becoming pregnant; there was the tearful girl, passionately refusing to name the man responsible. And, somehow, by means of the hairs on my neck, I knew it. ‘Are you,’ I whispered to Jocasta, ‘thinking the same thing as I am?’
‘Yes’, she admitted, her voice thick with emotion. ‘Those cupboards in the foreground; I wonder if we could get handles like that.’
Now, of course, we’re judging all films that way; as a sort of cinematic kitchen catalogue.
The scene in the gangster movie, where the villain smashes someone’s head open against the kitchen cupboards? Sure it was ghastly — but did you see how easily the blood wiped off that Corian surface?
And what about the movie where the drug courier frantically tries to stuff his cannabis into an already packed kitchen drawer? At last we could feel good — we’ve ordered pot drawers
twice
that size.
When will our obsession end? Only when we’ve spent our thousands of dollars, stared for a week at our horrible choices, and then realised that no-one judges your personality on your kitchen anyway. They look through your record collection instead.
Now we
really
need to do some shopping.
I
have come across the following scrawled notes lying on my own bedside table. I cannot think who they belong to, although the handwriting is somehow familiar.
I publish them in case the warnings they contain may be of use to others.
Notes to self after returning home from a party
I will henceforth begin with beer.
And not with red wine. And certainly not with gin.
I will no longer make a pig of myself with the guacamole.
I will especially refrain from polishing off a whole serve before the other guests arrive, noting my shame when Michelle felt it necessary to place her body between me and the access point to the second bowl.
When being introduced to new people, I will admit defeat and ask for the name to be repeated.
At the point of introduction, all my mental energy is going into the task of smiling and looking agreeable. This, it appears, is such an uphill battle, I’m left with no spare brain capacity. With the result: I can be introduced to people ten or twenty times, over a period of decades, and still not have a clue as to their names.
I will no longer pretend to be an old fan of their work, their company or their product.
I acknowledge that it’s far more likely that I’ve become confused, and the thing I’ve read/seen/heard/bought was done by their arch rival.
I will no longer pretend to have seen the new signs outside David’s business.
When David tells me he’s spent $10 000 re-doing his shop-front, I find myself automatically saying: ‘Yes, and doesn’t it look great.’ I now acknowledge this will inevitably lead David to ask: ‘Which bit in particular?’
I will not attempt to wriggle out of David’s inquiry by slurring my words and leaving pauses.
– Yes, well I really love the new win … awn … doo …
– Doorway?
– Yes, doorway, especially the way you’ve surrounded it with …
– Neons?
– Yes, neons. Exactly. In that wonderful colour. What do you think one would call that colour?
– I think most people would call it ‘blue’.
I will no longer offer lengthy and passionate views about the level of violence in the film
Gladiator. The point will inevitably be reached where I have to admit I’ve never seen it.
I will no longer remove my shirt during a social gathering.
I now understanding that, while my body may look good in those sunbaking photos, that’s because I was (a) horizontal and (b) breathing in. I now accept that (a) vertical and (b) dancing to ‘Nutbush City Limits’ is another matter entirely.
I will not claim to remember the gender, age and name of everyone’s kids.
The attempt to ask ‘How’s the kid(s)?’ — with the ‘s’ half-swallowed so they can take their pick about whether they have one kid or ten — is sometimes successful, except when the response is: ‘But you know Gary and I are in the IVF program.’
I will not pretend I can hear somebody over the music when I can’t.
Nor will I take the punt that they are telling me a joke by laughing uproariously the instant I see their mouth stop moving. Especially since it’s just as likely they’re disclosing details of their fatal disease.
I will no longer pretend to remember the name of Michelle’s cousin.
Especially as I can’t be sure whether it is Judy or Julie. Or maybe June. And there’s a very good chance it’s Rhonda. I will no longer stage a coughing fit when someone asks to be introduced.
I accept that the length of one’s anecdotes should not exceed the amount of time you’ve known the listener.
My hilarious half-hour account of our family boating holiday may be better reserved for old friends.
I will refuse the chicken wings from the proffered tray.
Experience teaches there is never anywhere to put the gnawed bone. Except, wrapped in a paper napkin, in one’s own pocket. I now accept that this can leave one’s dry-cleaner unimpressed.
I will strive to be enigmatic when drunk.
No longer will I feel personally responsible to fill every gap in the conversation. Nor will I feel the conversation would go better if someone stood up for the point of view currently being attacked by everyone else in the room. In future: let the next drunk guy do it.
And, finally, but crucially:
I will apologise to everyone.
Just as soon as I can remember their names.
W
hen deciding to take up any sort of competitive sport, the trick is to find an opponent of similar ability, which is the reason I was patrolling the office, squash racquet in hand, hunting out the sort of emphysemic, pot-bellied lard-legs who’d be my perfect match.
Finally my eyes alighted on this broken-down figure in the corner of the office, the bum amply filling the chair, the belly straining against the elastic expanders in his pants, the hands busy manoeuvring another doughnut towards his mouth. My kind of squash opponent.
To reveal his true name would be too humiliating for the man concerned, so let’s just call him ‘Tony Squires’.
‘Tony Squires’ and I met on the court the very next day. And what a sight we made: two overweight men, dressed in very tight shorts, trying to hit the bejesus out of a rubber ball, all the time wondering why our sports gear had shrunk so badly since its last use, sometime in the late 1970s.
Ten minutes into the game, and we’d both turned bright red — the sort of throbbing, alarming red which a paint catalogue might call ‘coronary cerise’. Each realised he might die at any minute, but each was spurred on by one bright hope: from the look of things, the other might die first. And then the survivor would win. Sure, the survivor would be crippled for life. Certainly, he’d have the death of a colleague on his conscience. But he’d win. Further proof that within even the most spongy-bottomed male there lingers sufficient aggression to launch World War Ill.
Consider what happens when a man misses the ball. Does he maturely take note of his error? Does he quietly work on improving his next shot? Not quite. Instead he throws his racquet to the ground and lets loose a scream of bloodcurdling intensity.
Even the most effete man believes his manhood is at stake when he’s placed in a competitive situation. That’s why we overturn the Squatter board in a blind rage, just because our five-year-old was the first to irrigate his paddocks.
And that’s why we lie awake nights, sweating mad over the bastard boss and how we’ve been passed over for promotion — wondering whether a conviction for first-degree murder might affect our superannuation entitlements.
And so what we lacked in talent, ‘Tony Squires’ and I were making up for in pure aggression — creating a game which combines the sweet elegance of English squash racquets with the mindless brutality of Rugby League. And, for those of you who play squash, there’s nothing quite like the look of wide-eyed surprise on an opponent’s face when you first unleash the full power of a head-high tackle.
As ‘Tony Squires’ may well have asked, save for his momentary lack of consciousness: Why are men so aggressive? Scientists believe it may result from the way the male brain is regularly bathed in a naturally occurring liquid known as ‘beer’.
Certainly, men will compete over anything — some even competing with their wives, trying to be the first to finish common household chores, such as orgasm.
What would happen if men could give birth? They’d turn it into a competition: ‘You should have seen the bloke in the next labour ward,’ they’d say, as they showed their mates their birth video on action replay. ‘He was struggling and straining, and out pops this little five-pounder. What a poofter! Mate, mine was a 12-pounder with a 20-hour labour, and we bonded right on touchdown. As for the breast-feeding — it was up with the footy jersey and the little tiger was away.’
As for me, the lungs have recovered, but not the ego. That’s what worries me — if ‘Tony Squires’ can beat me five games to nil, what does it say about the way
I
must look?
‘So I suppose these don’t belong to either of
you?’ says Jocasta, staring grimly at Batboy
and me, as we try to wriggle out of the
tightening domestic noose.
‘Yeah,’ Batboy stammers finally, showing
a most regrettable streak of honesty,
‘the CD is mine.’
Which leaves Jocasta to focus on me:
‘So,’ she says with a wave of the size
10½ shoes, ‘what about you, Cinderella?’
I
‘m sick of this house, and I’m sick of this idea that if you leave things lying around,
someone
will magically pick them up.’ Jocasta is standing in the living room, holding a Smash Mouth CD in one hand and a pair of kicked-off men’s shoes, size 10½, in the other.
‘So I suppose these don’t belong to either of you?’ says Jocasta, staring grimly at Batboy and me, as we try to wriggle out of the tightening domestic noose.
‘Yeah,’ Batboy stammers finally, showing a most regrettable streak of honesty, ‘the CD is mine.’
Which leaves Jocasta to focus on me: ‘So,’ she says with a wave of the shoes, ‘what about you, Cinderella?’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘actually I was just about to put them away.’
Jocasta is an attractive woman, but perhaps less so when she is letting loose a snort of derision at one’s expense. It’s time to go into major damage control, and I quickly suggest we all hop in.
‘It’ll be fine,’ I say soothingly, speaking as one would to a madman wired with explosive. ‘I’ll take all the stuff out of all the kitchen cupboards and scrub them down, and then I’ll restack and refold everything in the linen cupboard.’
Pretty helpful offer, I think you’ll agree. And yet what do I get? Another snort.
‘That’s typical,’ says Jocasta. ‘You always want to do these major jobs, these show-offy, once-a-year sort of jobs, and you never want to do the ordinary, boring, once-a-week jobs, like cleaning the bathroom.’
My mind grinds and clunks as I wonder exactly
why
I don’t like doing the ordinary, boring, grungy jobs and suddenly, despite myself, the truth comes tumbling out: ‘Well, I guess nobody does.’
It’s an admission which leaves me, about three minutes later, being loaded-up with cleaning products and a strict instruction to have the entire bathroom spotless by noon.
This poses a problem for the supposedly aware man — how to successfully complete the allotted task without confessing that, in all your forty years, you’ve never actually cleaned a whole bathroom. Certainly, it seems a mistake to ask how it’s done, so I just head in there with anything I can find labelled ‘cleaning product’. If Jif doesn’t do the job, I’ll give it a blast with oven-cleaner.
As it happens, after a while I actually start becoming involved in the job. There are some grey bits in the grouting which I get off with a scratchy pad, and some mess around the water spout which I manage to get off by unscrewing the tap. Then there’s the toilet, which to be cleaned properly needs the whole seat assembly unscrewed and removed, which I find pretty easy, especially using my battery drill, fitted with its screwdriver attachment, and with a little squirt of WD40 on the bolt heads and some bricklayer’s acid on the cement joints.
It is then Jocasta comes in to find me hunched over my tool box — the bathroom a disaster, the taps on the floor, the toilet disassembled — wearing my tool belt and, in order to use the acid, my full-face safety breathing apparatus.
‘I can’t believe,’ said Jocasta, aghast, ‘the way you’ve managed to turn the ultimate ordinary job into a show-off bloke’s job. I suppose you were worried your male appendage would drop off if you actually did it properly?’ (Only she didn’t say ‘male appendage’.)
I could see her argument, but in such circumstances the old marital advice holds true: the best form of defence is attack.
‘Well, I don’t know who’s been
trying
to clean this bathroom for the past ten years,’ I say, rather gamely, ‘but they haven’t been doing a very thorough job.’
A week later, with the benefit of considerable time on my own for contemplation, I now see this comment was a mistake. A mistake which led directly to Jocasta’s latest idea: the Household Tasks Roster, stuck up there on the fridge door. Revenge, I discover, belongs to she who allocates the jobs.
The new roster, posted yesterday, distributes jobs for the next eight weeks. Eight weeks in which I will be able, in Jocasta’s words, ‘to clean the bathroom to your own high standards — something that should give you enormous personal satisfaction.’
For Batboy and The Space Cadet, the roster affords different opportunities. Opportunities — again in Jocasta’s words — for them to ‘perhaps learn the skills that may make you the world’s first two reasonable men and thus improve the life of some other poor benighted woman.’
