Husband Replacement Therapy

by Lette, Kathy

  ‘An engineering student.’

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘Put it this way – he turned on his bow thrusters and counter-propellers and shoved his rudder hard to starboard. But I’m afraid I had to scuttle him this morning. He talked all this new-age “woke” crap.’

  ‘Oh.’ I grimaced, laughing. ‘All that PC “woke” stuff puts me to sleep.’

  ‘Me too. In the end, I was like, hey, buddy, I don’t want to “tap into cuddle power” or “ditch the ideal and love what’s real” or be a “dream-maker not a dream-breaker”. I just want you to ride me, cowboy, and pillage like a pirate!’

  I stifled a covetous sigh. While Emerald was having flirtation, fun and frottage, I was flat-out having ‘fun’ with Amber – activities that would make Albanian daytime television look riveting. When we weren’t at a flash mob dance rehearsal, discovering the art of glass blowing, or playing bridge, blackjack, shuffleboard, backgammon, indoor golf or mini tennis, we were catching waves on the flow-rider; that is, until my new bikini bottoms managed to catch a different wave from me all together.

  ‘Oh, god, what torture have you got planned for me tomorrow?’ I asked, grimacing, after dinner on day seven. ‘Abseiling off the bow? Walking on hot coals? Knitting my own straitjacket?’

  ‘Scuba diving lessons in the pool,’ Amber enthused.

  ‘Let me see – dressing up in a rubber Batsuit, dragging ten kilos of equipment around on my back before plummeting into deep water, only to have to drag it all back up onto dry land again an hour later . . . It’s just way, way too much like marriage for my liking.’

  ‘Speaking of which – any word from that mongrel you wed?’ Emerald asked, curiously.

  I shook my head and continued laying out my pyjamas on the bed. There were daily loving messages from my kids: So glad you’re going to be okay, Mum. Have fun! and so on, and a few from friends I hadn’t slagged off at my infamous birthday bash, but total radio silence from Harry. The truth began to cling to me like a chill – he no longer loved me.

  Emerald was fuming on my behalf. ‘What a pain in the arse he is.’

  ‘If I could isolate the pain just to my arse, that would be a relief.’

  ‘Well, bugger that bastard! Come with me to the disco and nab yourself a joy boy. Let’s give ourselves something to talk about when we’re in the old people’s home.’

  ‘How could I ever get a joy boy? Not even my husband wants me.’ I checked my email inbox for a message from Harry for, oh, only the hundredth time that day. Nothing, as usual.

  ‘You’re the one who talked about seizing the day and carpe-dieming like there’s no tomorrow,’ Emerald reminded me.

  I automatically checked my WhatsApp, in case I’d missed something. Nada.

  ‘Don’t you want to get into a man’s pants and not have to launder them later?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ I checked Messenger for Harry’s name. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

  ‘Good god,’ Emerald gasped, as she struggled with the zipper of one of her new dresses. ‘I’m piling on the pounds. It’s that bloody dessert trolley. Thank god I’m going to shag it off later.’ Tonight she’d settled on the whole Belle Époque courtesan look, complete with pearls draped on her near-naked breasts.

  ‘I’m sure the extra seven pounds is just your eyelash extensions,’ I joshed.

  ‘It’s probably not the cake, but the cocktails,’ Amber rebuked, as Emerald poured herself another glass of champagne.

  ‘Hey, I drink responsibly . . . I haven’t spilt one drop while climbing up to sit on the face of an R-rated Romeo.’

  I was only half listening as I scrolled through friends’ Facebook updates. And, suddenly, there was Harry at the beach with his board, smiling, surrounded by laughing young women from the surf club. Surfing! Laughing! Smiling! Surrounded by adoring young women! It was a punch to my solar plexus. His wife was dying and there he was, having fun in the sun. Well, okay, his wife wasn’t exactly dying, but what if I were?

  ‘Maybe I will come tonight,’ I heard myself say, tossing my phone onto the couch. ‘Why not? My husband’s clearly deserted me, meaning I’m footloose and Spanx–free!’ I paraphrased Emerald.

  ‘Good on ya, Rubes. It’s time to be daring and bold and walk on the wild side.’

  I slipped off my wedding ring. ‘I am single and ready to mingle,’ I said.

  ‘Forget Eat, Pray, Love. What about Drink, Dance, Shag? That’s what women want. Sex is a life force. It’s so intoxicating it takes over your whole imagination. I’d jump off tall buildings or stop speeding trains to get that passion fix. You’ve just got to send out the right sexy signals.’ Emerald yanked my T-shirt over my head. ‘What are you going to wear? Let’s start by tightening your bra.’ She shoved her hand into my left bra cup and hoisted my breast towards the ceiling. ‘Get those tits right up.’

  ‘Hey, what little I have is already up and out, okay?’ I said, affectionately slapping her hand away.

  ‘Stop being such a goddamn wuss and make it work!’ Emerald commanded, hitching up my skirt by folding the waistband over itself. ‘And here, wear these knickers. I bought them today but they’re too small.’

  Amber intercepted the lacy black pants Emerald had thrown my way and read the label. ‘“Lover’s Spark” Brazilian briefs?’ She shook her head at us in despair. ‘I’m starting to rethink Darwin, I really am. You girls are evolving backwards into teenagers.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to wear an outfit that reveals parts of me only an obstetrician should see!’ I chuckled, tugging my hem back down.

  Amber’s scowl grew deeper. ‘What do they call this disco? Grab a Granny?’

  ‘The disco’s called The Erogenous Zone, and Ruby will soon see why. Here.’ Emerald thrust her glass of bubbly at me. ‘Have a quick personality drink before you go out.’

  ‘But we’d planned to win the trivia quiz tonight,’ Amber protested with pinched lemon lips and a pitying tone. ‘I can’t win without you. The literature category’s your forte. And it’s been so much fun. We learnt a great Japanese word last night – “Yugen”, a description of the awe that overcomes you when you regard Mother Nature’s mysterious beauty.’

  ‘Yes, it was fun, Amber, but honestly, when am I ever going to use a word like that in my drab little life?’ I said, forlornly. ‘No more brain aerobics. I wanna hear my body talk,’ I sang, launching into an Olivia Newton-John impression, which Emerald joined.

  After we’d collapsed, panting with laughter, onto the couch, Emerald said to Amber, ‘Why don’t you dismount your high horse and come with us?’ She stood and unzipped a bag of recently purchased make-up products, and turned my face to the light to apply eyeshadow.

  ‘You’re wearing make-up now?’ Amber asked, astounded. ‘Honestly, at this moment, it would be easier for me to grasp quark nuclear physics than to understand what the hell is going on with my sisters. I’m going to lose the quiz and then get an early night,’ she said, pitifully.

  ‘Sure . . . you can go to sleep early, but that will only tempt us to shave off one of your eyebrows when we get in!’ Emerald laughed as she layered eyeliner on my eyelids. Amber was right – we were totally regressing. Next it’d be pillow fights and short-sheeting each other’s beds.

  I laughed then, too, jerking my head backwards, which caused Emerald’s charcoal eye pencil to etch a bold stroke from my right nostril to my left earlobe, which only made us laugh more. While Emerald fetched a make-up wipe, I slugged down another huge slurp of personality.

  ‘I’m just window-shopping, Amber, I promise. I’m not going to do anything. So don’t get your horny hopes up about me, okay, Emerald?’ I called out after her. ‘Besides, as if any man would ever fancy me.’

  ‘You’re still hot . . . it just comes in flushes now,’ Emerald said convivially, returning from her room.

  I suspected the only heat I’d feel in the disco would be from blushes of embarrassment. Gosh, what’s that noise? I thought, as my big sister squirted me with per
fume. Oh, just the sound of millions of men laughing themselves to death at the thought of Ruby Ryan pulling a toy boy.

  In truth, I didn’t think it would be possible to take the amount of drugs required to hallucinate that I was attractive. My sex appeal was so miniscule, it’d take a microscope to find it. When it came to sending out sexy signals, I might as well be relaying transmissions from Alpha Centauri.

  ‘Don’t worry, Amber, my eyes are bigger than my vag, so to speak.’

  And with that, before I could chicken out, Emerald ushered me out the door to go double-park in The Erogenous Zone.

  10

  ‘Yugen! Yugen! Yugen!’ was the only word I could summon from my vast vocabulary as an athletic man half my age extracted his tongue from my mouth. I ran my hands over the satiny skin of his muscular forearms and gazed into his dazzling azure eyes.

  I rocked back on my heels to examine the hair-gelled Adonis who was pressing his groin up against me – his enthusiastic groin. As a recently rejected wife of twenty-eight years I lapped up the attention as if I were a rescue dog from the pound. He was nearly six feet tall, with a mop of sun-kissed, chestnut-brown hair. His face was a complex geometrical configuration of bronzed bone structure. Basically, the boy had hit the DNA jackpot. Sadly, when he spoke, I realised he was big for his brain, like a dinosaur.

  ‘Yeet. What a rig,’ he said in a rush.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re a tight little number,’ he added, squeezing both my butt cheeks.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘How’s our vibe! Let’s go back to your cabin,’ he said hotly into my ear. ‘My room’s so small, you gotta be a ventriloquist to get in there.’

  ‘I think you mean contortionist,’ I corrected him.

  ‘I’m, like, totally woke, by the way,’ he added.

  ‘Must have been that espresso martini,’ I joked.

  ‘Huh?’ he replied.

  When I’d walked into the whoosh of body heat that was The Erogenous Zone an hour earlier, I’d immediately executed a 180-degree swivel on my high heel to get the hell out of Cougar Country. But Emerald had seized my elbow and frogmarched me to the bar.

  ‘There’s so much cock in here. Act half normal and you’re going to get laid,’ my normally straight sister shouted in my ear. ‘Any woman could pull on this boat. Jabba the Slut could pull. Indeed, I think I snogged her myself on the dance floor last night!’ she laughed. ‘But first you need some cougar juice,’ she explained, ordering cocktails.

  All around us, waterfalls of neon light cascaded down the walls as inebriated young men careered like toddlers, pinballing around the dance floor, shouting over each other in rapid-fire lingo. Older women wobbled on too-high heels in overawed orbit around the cubs, their smiles welded on with a mix of desperation and desire.

  How pathetic, I’d thought – only to find myself, three martinis later, bumping and grinding along with them to Hot Chocolate’s ‘You Sexy Thing’, feeling happier and hornier and freer and more fabulous than I had for decades.

  Now, I am to dancing what an African dictator is to world peace – I definitely move to a different drummer. But, unfortunately, the cocktails had affected my critical abilities to the point where I thought I could dance, which is why, moments later, mid ABBA medley, I’d found myself hitting my head on a disco ball as only a girl from the Insular Peninsular can, before toppling backwards into the arms of the young bloke with whom I was now entwined. And, good lord, could the guy move. He danced as though his feet had taken steroids.

  As Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ morphed into ‘Sexual Healing’, a slow beat reverberated through the floor. Marvin Gaye’s crooning had couples moving sluggishly through the warm air, and my dance partner and I swayed sensuously with them.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I shouted, tipsily.

  The young man gave me a scorchingly hot look. How hot? Put it this way – if I were an egg, I’d have hard-boiled. ‘Wave,’ he replied ardently into my ear. ‘Spelt W-A-Y-V-E.’

  Wayve? That sobered me up. How young was this guy? Was it even legal to be rubbing nether regions with him? Was I about to be carted off in handcuffs by the water police? I suddenly imagined myself cutting up his food, tying his shoelaces and carrying him on my shoulders to see The Wiggles in concert. I had a precipitous dread of the fluorescent lights coming on, enabling him to discover my real age, then watching him fleeing from the dance floor wearing an expression reminiscent of Munch’s The Scream.

  I immediately broke free and fought my way back to Emerald’s side. My big sister was holding court with some young men on a leather banquette, her mouth lipsticked bright red with bravado – the very shade favoured by our mother.

  ‘How much have I d . . . d . . . drunk?’ I slurred. ‘If I gave a urine sample right now, would it have an olive in it?’

  ‘Hope so. Speaking of which . . .’ Emerald turned to address the nearest cubs in her coterie. One was a dome-headed hunk who looked as though he lubed up monster trucks for a living. The other was extravagantly tattooed in ill-conceived reptilian motifs. ‘Boys, you need to do something to improve your personalities – go get me a cocktail, will you?’

  When the bite of her remark passed them by, she simply handed over her lanyard for payment. ‘Buy yourselves a beer too. And some more lady petrol for my sister here.’ Once more the boys stared at her blankly. ‘A martini on the rocks,’ she decoded, and when they departed in the direction of the bar she turned to me. ‘So, did you nab a dance partner?’

  ‘Well, yes, actually. English doesn’t seem to be his native tongue, but I think he’s just invited himself back to my cabin.’

  ‘Who?’

  I hitched a brow in Wayve’s desirable direction.

  Emerald’s eyeballs jumped out of their sockets, rushed across the dance floor, gave the young bloke in question a full-body once over, then snapped back into place. ‘Well pulled,’ was her verdict. ‘What’s stopping you, then?’

  ‘His name’s Wayve – W-A-Y-V-E – but I don’t think he’s quite breaking on the rocks.’

  ‘So? Low IQ’s not sexually transmittable.’

  ‘Okay, but . . . but . . . then there’s the fact that I can’t get naked in front of a stranger! I haven’t even gone sleeveless in five years! And what about the stretch marks on my belly?’

  ‘Those are your tiger stripes, Ruby. You’ve earned them. Be proud of them. Alessandro always makes me feel so fat – like one of those giant jellyfish in a Jacques Cousteau doco, floating in the sea like a flesh balloon. But the boys on board think I’m Kardashian-esque. It’s all free sex to them. Besides, if you don’t nab the guy, someone else will.’ Emerald pointed back to the dance floor, where a woman with a particularly steatopygous derriere was waddling on fragile heels towards Wayve, beaming at him like an overeager game show host.

  ‘Do you fancy him?’ Emerald asked, with an appraising eye.

  I looked at the strapping young man and felt my salivary glands shift into third gear. ‘Yes, but I don’t speak his language. He keeps going on about things being “lush” and “frothy” and “totes awkie” and “triggered”, and how he’s looking for inner peace. I don’t know how to break it to him that there’s no such thing – only anxiety, insecurity and alcohol.’

  ‘Who cares? As long as he’s fluent in body language.’

  ‘No, no, I can’t. It’s been so long since I’ve been with any other bloke besides Harry. Decades!’

  ‘Well, all you need to know is that young men have foreskins. Uncut guys are great, by the way. The head of the cock is like a big, giant man clit. And there will be dick picks. Sending genitalia selfies is to courtship rituals what compiling mixtapes was in our day.’

  ‘But what if I’m no good?’ Since Harry’s betrayal, I’d been gorging compulsively on self-loathing. ‘No. I can’t go through with it. It’s too embarrassing.’

  ‘You won’t be doing anything that your lying, cheating husband isn’t doing right now with
the girl of his wet dreams.’

  The thought of what Harry might be doing with whom prompted me to fumble for my phone. It was about the millionth time I’d checked for a message that day. Silence, I realised then, is not golden. It’s pitch black, cold and cruel. Jealousy and rejection churned sourly in my stomach. I had loved my husband with every fibre of my being, and what had it got me? Heartache, loneliness and self-esteem so low not even a limbo dancer could retrieve it. Love should be classified as a Class A addiction, I pondered. Well, from now on, I was in romance rehab – starting with taking the phallic cure and being as shagadelic as womanly possible.

  But then I faltered. No, I just couldn’t break my marriage vows.

  This decision prompted an urgent message from my clitoris, along the lines of ‘Hey, haven’t you ever entertained the idea of wild, inventive, spontaneous sex?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I replied, mentally.

  ‘No, I mean, with a partner,’ clarified my clit.

  ‘Ha-ha. Clit, calm down. I just cannot betray my husband . . . Can I?’

  ‘Why not?!’ my clitoris urged. ‘Live dangerously!’

  ‘I live dangerously,’ I countered. ‘Just last week, I let a parking meter run over by five minutes!’

  ‘Live large!’ urged my clit. ‘Sure, there are worse things than celibacy – like leprosy, and death.’

  Emerald, who was obviously in cahoots with my clitoris, pressed some condoms into my palm. ‘Now, go kick him to the kerb, sis.’

  The disco floor was kaleidoscopic, with dancers weaving, coagulating, dispersing and swirling all around me. As I took Wayve in my arms, Emerald called out after me –

  ‘Coo-coo-ca-choo, Mrs Robinson!’ My big sister winked at me lopsidedly before starting a conga line and dancing back to the bar.

  ‘Ding-dong! Time for him to ring your devil’s doorbell,’ urged my clit. ‘Hello, I’m coming!’

  A muscly-thighed Chris Hemsworth impersonator with the IQ of a houseplant was tempting me to break my most sacred marriage vow – and I was discussing the pros and cons with my clitoris.