by Kathy Lette
‘Christ. All those years at Catholic school taught me fuck all. The sin of omission is passing up sin! Do you know that I once sat next to George Clooney at a fundraiser? And he asked for my number?’
‘Men are like books. So many out there, so little time!’ Jazz grinned coyly. ‘Look, if the Good Lord hadn’t meant us to have affairs, She wouldn’t have given us lingerie.’ She twanged her stocking top as she got into the car. ‘Women are the new men! Oestrogen is the new testosterone!’ She punched the air.
‘Yeah. And bullshit is just the same old bullshit.’
‘Look,’ she justified, ‘it’s not a perfect set-up, but life isn’t perfect, is it? Will you cover for me tonight, if Studz asks . . .’
‘I dunno, Jazz. I hate lying. I—’
‘Otherwise,’ she grabbed my arm in a ferocious vice, ‘I’m going to turn into the kind of deranged woman who hatches abandoned bird eggs in her bra.’
‘Well, when you put it like that . . .’ Starting the engine, I kicked off my shoes and drove in my stockinged feet.
‘You know he shares the flat with a mate. Music student. Sooo cute. We could double date!’ she enthused as we crossed the inky Thames.
‘A student? I’m forty-bloody-four! I’m so old I’ve put Doctor Kevorkian’s number on my speed dial. Besides which, I’m married.’
‘You know, you really can’t blame Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina for wearying of their wearisome husbands. The only reason to get married is so that you can have furtive affairs . . . otherwise life would be so boring you’d have to get married!’ Jazz laughed mirthlessly.
For a moment I was partially persuaded by her nimble rationalizations. All those unhappy wives, rows and rows of battery hens, cooped up, hatching eggs in our terraced hutches, our bad-tempered, arrogant roosters strutting around on their matching, identically mown lawns. The predictability of it was so claustrophobic. I wanted to be free-range! To roam from home! To be taken in the wild . . . or perhaps backwards over the dustbins by Russell Crowe.
‘Hannah says that I should try to rekindle my passion with Rory. You know – afternoon liaisons . . .’
‘Ha! You can’t rekindle passion. I’m a chef and believe me, soufflés don’t rise twice. Besides, life, like cooking, is much more palatable when you deviate from the recipe. Come on a double date with me instead. Get in touch with your Inner Vixen!’
‘You’re really going to see him again?’
‘Good God, yes.’ Jazz beamed, humming gaily to herself. ‘Some mistakes are just too much fun to only make once. So forget rekindling passions, okay?’
‘Okay?’
‘Just remember, All Men Are Bastards And Evermore Shall Be So Unless They Are Orlando Bloom Who Is Crumpet. Got that?’
‘Got that.’
I thought of the way Rory had looked at me when we’d first got married. Of course, now he only looked at his pets like that. Maybe if I got fleas or foot rot he’d be more attentive. For the first six years, oh, how happy we’d been. But then, after the babies were born, he’d compartmentalized me. That was the trouble. Women love all day, all night; it garnishes the whole pizza of life. For men, it’s just one slice. Work, friends and sport comprise the other slices. But Jazz was right. Rekindling passion was a ridiculous idea. It was pointless trying to get back on my husband’s menu . . . Wasn’t it?
10. The Reason I Don’t Tell You When I’m Having an Orgasm Is Because You’re Never There
I was sitting astride my husband, pitching precariously like a retired rodeo rider. It was Saturday afternoon, the kids were at the cinema, the surgery had closed at one and we were ‘liaising’ to ‘rekindle our passion’.
I attempted another halfhearted kiss, avoiding Rory’s beery breath and quite possibly the food he had stuck between his teeth. I remembered fondly when we were drunk on nothing but excitement. The Annie Oakley routine was chafing so I dismounted, positioning myself robotically first this way, then that. It was not fore but boreplay; a total waste of leg waxing. I snorted with tedium – a noise Rory evidently mistook for a groan of passion as he then began tweaking this and twanging that. His touch felt as erotic as a wet shower curtain sticking to my body. My responses were automatic, like the reflexes of a knee when hit by a hammer. God. What had I become? A clam? Did all married couples go through this routine of pawing each other uselessly until one or other passed out? He persevered for another, oh, two seconds tops, then licked his finger to manufacture some moistness. It was then it struck me that I was truly miserable.
To bring about a rapid conclusion, I wet my own finger and tickled his prostate – a sexual shorthand learned by most bored and busy wives. Rory ejaculated with all the exhilaration of a burp.
As he showered, I lay in a bed which smelled of nothing but the meaninglessness of our encounter.
Rory splashed back into the room, more or less wearing a towel. He opened the door leading onto the hall and a German Shepherd with stitches bounded onto the bed, my brand new and now half-gnawed leopardskin slipper between his foaming incisors.
‘That’s it!’ I heard a voice raised in anger and realized that it was mine. My emotions were spinning round like a jam-jar lid dropped on a hard slate floor. ‘You may not have noticed in all the years we’ve been married, Rory, that I actually hate animals.’
‘Oh come on, Cass’, Rory, loin-clothed in terry towelling, struck his Johnny Weissmuller pose, hands on hips, chest puffed out, lats splayed. ‘He’s just playing. Satan – down, boy.’
‘Satan?! The fact that all German Shepherds are invariably called Hitler, Adolf, Eva or Satan slightly belies the notion that they’re “fun loving”, don’t you think? This is the sort of dog which rips the face off a baby for its teething toy.’
‘Actually, he’s a very upmarket dog. He was paper-trained on the New York Review of Books. This dog won’t even mount a leg unless it’s clad in Armani,’ he replied jovially, as he dressed.
‘Even if your patients aren’t having sex with my leg, they’re doing hideous things behind my Conran couch, which wouldn’t happen if only you were a real doctor instead of a vet.’
I couldn’t see his face beneath his floppy fringe, but I felt I’d scored a direct hit. ‘There’s nothing second-rate about veterinary science,’ he replied tensely. ‘My patients have certainly had to learn to be quick on their paws around you, Cassie. Come on,’ he tickled the big dog under his slathering jaw. ‘How could you not love animals?’ he asked, regaining his cavalier composure.
‘Oh, I do. They’re so good with gravy.’
‘What is wrong with you lately?’
‘Nowhere did it state in my marriage vows that I would have to cough up fur balls.’ I was up now, tugging on jeans. ‘I mean, this house is filthy enough, thanks to your domestic blindness.’
‘Oh, Cassie,’ he sighed. ‘Why must you always sweat the small stuff?’
‘Because it is all about the small stuff, Rory. Reality is about mundanity.’
‘But you’re clinically obsessed. It’s been years since I’ve seen you without a toilet brush in your hand.’
‘Oh, and you think I’m doing that for pleasure? No, I’m doing it because you claim psychological brutality if I ask you to put your dirty underwear in the laundry basket.’ Giving a melodramatic sigh, I set about tidying up the bedroom.
Rory waylaid me, turned me to him, took my face between the palms of his large hands and gave a cheeky smile. ‘But, Cass, that’s why I love you. Because you cope so well.’
Anger bulged up in me – big as a submarine surfacing, the wake rippling out. ‘They’re just words, Rory – those things that actions speak louder than. Just think about it.’ I broke free and recommenced tidying up with ferocity. ‘How many acres of toast do you think I’ve buttered for you? How many flocks of lamb do you think I’ve baked for your Sunday dinners? How many schools of fish have I fried? Pascal does all the cooking for Hannah, you know. The man sears salmon! Well, I want a salmon searer, goddamn it!’
‘Oh God, I hate that,’ I scowled. ‘I hate the way I can be lecturing you about how you should help me clean up the house while you just stand there watching me clean up the house. I work fulltime too, in case you hadn’t noticed!’
‘But you girls can juggle. A woman’s brain has a ten per cent thicker connecting cord between the left and right lobes. Men’s brains can only concentrate on one thing at a time. If I’m hammering and the doorbell rings, I’ll hit my thumb. I just can’t help it, you see.’ He beamed cockily, thinking himself off the biological hook. ‘It’s genetic.’
‘Oh really? I bet you wouldn’t have trouble multi-tasking at, say, an orgy.’
Rory was trailing after me now as I slammed drawers, shoved clothes in cupboards and kicked dogs.
‘If you didn’t have so many people over all the time, you wouldn’t have to do so much housework,’ Rory said with a studied air of truculence. ‘If it’s not your Witches Coven brewing husband-poisoning potions, it’s the Motley Whatsits for fondue.’
‘You are so anti-social, do you know that? “Oh no, we can’t go out tonight because we went out in October . . .” Well it’s now March – and what exactly are we staying in for? It’s not the sex, that’s for sure.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Dark crescents had begun to bloom in the armpits of his shirt. ‘Here’s a novel idea, Cassie. You could initiate sex now and again – and try different things. Couples do swap positions occasionally, you know.’
‘Yes. Let’s swap positions. You stand by the sink washing-up and I’ll lie on the couch farting and watching the footie. Believe me, a husband sprawled drunkenly before a blazing television is not exactly foreplay for a girl – not that you’d care. You don’t seem to have even noticed that I haven’t had an orgasm for over a year.’
He looked stunned. ‘What?’
‘You’re a surgeon. You’re good with your hands. You can fashion a temporary cistern ball float with a squeezy bottle and a coat hanger in five minutes flat, and yet you can’t find my G spot? Location! Location! Location! That’s all there is to say about the G spot, really.’
‘And you’re just telling me this now?’ Rory gave me the sidelong glance of a maltreated pet. ‘After how many years of marriage?’
‘A sensitive man would have noticed – he wouldn’t have to be told. But shucks, as long as you’ve had your pleasure . . . Then you just roll over and snore, like some caveman.’
‘Look, I told you if I’m snoring I’ll sleep in the surgery bedroom.’ He flopped back onto my dressing table chair, flummoxed.
‘Rory, your snoring is at a decibel level which would only be tolerable if the spare bedroom was in, say, Nova Scotia.’ I attacked the bed now, wrestling the duvet into submission. ‘But of course you don’t want to talk about it. The only thing we do talk about of late is how little we have to talk about!’
‘Actually, you know, I can talk about feelings – like how bored shitless I feel having conversations about feelings all the fucking time!’ Glaring hotly, he knifed to his feet. ‘I mean, what are you trying to turn me into? A female impersonator?’
‘No. I’m just sooo sick of living with a Neanderthal. Why don’t you just go kill a bison with your bare hands and get this macho shit out of your system?’
‘Hey, if it weren’t for us macho blokes, human beings would still be passing through the digestive systems of bears and tigers and lions. I mean, what are you suggesting I do?’ I could see Rory digging his fingernails into the pads of his palms in an effort to control his temper. ‘Go and find a cave somewhere and hibernate until you feel like starting an argument again?’
‘I don’t start them. You do.’
‘Look at us, Cass! We argue and then we argue about why we’re arguing. What is happening to us?’
‘We need help, Rore. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’
We looked at each other for a silent eternity; though the clock recorded it as twenty-seven seconds. Then my husband’s eyes narrowed knowingly.
‘You know who you sound just like? Jasmine.’ He shook me by my shoulders. ‘Who are you? What have you done with my wife!’
‘I know you hate Jazz. You always have. But tell me, do you hate her more or less than you hate all my other girlfriends?’
‘I don’t hate her. It’s just that she’s encamped in the gender jungle, conscientiously patrolling her little patch of territory, just like those Japanese soldiers of the Second World War who occasionally emerge from obscure bits of Borneo to discover that the war is over and nobody bothered to tell them.’
‘The sex war’s not over. This is just a new front in the existing skirmish. I have tested this theory under scientific conditions and—’
‘Meaning, you’ve asked your girlfriends over cappuccinos.’
‘Well, um, yes. But the point is, Rory, if we were in a plane right now we’d be assuming the crash position.’
‘It’s not all my fault, you know. All I get from you is the cold shoulder and the hot tongue.’
‘Lucky you. ’Cause the only tongue I’ve felt for years is one in my shoe.’
‘Well maybe if you stopped emasculating me, I’d be more confident between the sheets. I mean, how can you knock my profession like that? You know I was the youngest in my year to graduate. I got there faster than anyone else!’
‘Oh, that is true of so many things you do, Rory.’
My husband looked at me like a kicked dog. ‘I would say sorry,’ he said sarcastically, ‘only the Testosterone Treaty obviously prohibits me from conceding defeat.’
‘Obviously. Does it allow some kind of Husband Relocation Programme?’
‘So what are you saying?’ he went on. ‘That the warranty on our marriage has expired?’
‘If our marriage were one of your pets you’d have it put down. Seems to me we’re at that stage where we either divorce or seek an “interesting couple for hours of uninhibited fun!”’
Reflexively he took a step backward. Judging by Rory’s expression, I might as well have pulled a pin on a live grenade. The clock’s luminous hands creaked into the suffocating silence.
‘So you really have lost your orgasm? Christ. What happened to us, Cass? We used to fuck like rabbits.’
I shrugged. ‘We got marital myxomatosis.’
11. The Three Muffkateers
Marriage is definitely Nature’s way of promoting masturbation. Only to me, wanking is like dancing without music, I confided to Jazz over the email.
You’re too young for the Pope to be ringing you for tips on celibacy, Cass, she replied. You need a toy boy. Think about it.
And I did think about it. A lot. I thought about it when I cricked my neck and found myself lying on my belly getting a massage from a bulky, hulky gym masseur, and I had to fight the urge to roll over like some beer-bellied businessman and ask for ‘extras’.
I thought about it when the sports mistress told us a joke in the staffroom. ‘Why are married women fatter than single women? Because when single women get home they look in the fridge – and go to bed. When married women look in the bed – they go to the fridge.’
I thought about it while reading the Guardian’s report on marriage, which stated that forty-two per cent of women surveyed said they often thought about running away with someone else. Half wished they’d never married. And a third found sex boring. I thought about it when I woke up crying, then realized I hadn’t been asleep yet. I ground my teeth during nightmares, only to discover I was wide awake.
I thought about it while visiting my parents. In England, fathers are often found at the bottom of their gardens, like fairies. My mum called my father’s shed his ‘anteroom to death’. He disappeared there for hours at a time. ‘I just pop down occasionally to check he’s still breathing.’
I was huddled with my half-pickled rellos by his shed one Sunday, freezing around a damp barbecue fir
e – when my father announced it was my wedding anniversary. ‘Go on, Rory. Kiss your lovely bride.’
I’d been studiously avoiding the subject. The biggest surprise Rory could give me on our wedding anniversary would be to remember it. And if he was reminded, I’d only have to endure some kind of dismal, pseudo-celebratory anniversary sex later. Cue The Hand. (Parents, can’t live with them – can’t be born without them.)
My mother was the only one who noticed that I’d become small, lumpen and anchored by anxieties. ‘I need a change,’ I told her. ‘A thrill . . . And I don’t mean a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela or white-water rafting.’
Her advice was to just throw myself into my work.
And so I did. For the next week I threw myself into writing term reports. I was so distraught that on two occasions I nearly wrote the truth to the parents. Do not allow this child to breed under any circumstances. And, to the father of the school’s most disruptive pupil, Get a vasectomy. This must not happen again.
But at the end of the week, with the kids cascading down the corridor after lunch and the air electric with the buzz of their banter, I felt successfully diverted from my marital angst. If only I could have been similarly distracted from my Headmaster. But there he was, striding towards me, his trousers up around his chest, the turn-ups not quite reaching his ankles. ‘My office,’ he said ominously. If Scroope had a chin he would have jutted it out.
Once I’d sat down opposite his desk, he asked me if I thought he was the type to ‘fall prey to the enervating parasitism of staffroom gossip?’
I told him that once I’d worked out what that sentence meant, I’d let him know.
‘Did you really say to Mr Ratzinger that his child was born intelligent but that education had ruined him?’ If a power company could harness the steam coming out of his ears, London’s energy problems would be over.
‘Well, yes, I do think Jasper would benefit from some home schooling . . .’
