But ironing a shirt properly is not that hard. Just select the correct temperature, and remember the Idiot’s First Law of Ironing: if the shirt you’re ironing has very, very long sleeves, it may well be a pair of pants.
Cleaning the Floor
Before vacuuming your new place, you’ll have to figure out what sort of floor covering you are dealing with, which can be tough in a house full of Typical Young Men.
Look down at your floor right now, and describe the major floor covering. That’s right — empty pizza boxes and grease-covered motorcycle parts. But now, try looking under the pizza boxes and the bike parts. Yes! You have a floor! And a vermin problem! What a shame that man, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
Cooking
It’s not as hard as it looks. At each meal, just eat something from each major food type:
Food from cupboards;
Food from fridges;
Food you ring up for;
Beer.
The rules of cooking are very easy. Food from cupboards is boiled or heated and food from fridges is grilled or fried. Food from cupboards is technically known as carbohydrate, and includes pasta, rice and potatoes. Food from fridges, on the other hand, is always protein — unless it’s green coloured, in which case it’s usually just some very off meat. Or, in very rare cases, a vegetable.
Either way, the Typical Young Man will refuse to eat it. The need to ‘get plenty of greens’ can be addressed by opening another can of VB.
Cleaning the Bathroom
Many Typical Young Men are shocked to find that cleaning a bathroom doesn’t just mean flushing the loo. And so they sit, staring at the disgraceful mess, hopefully wondering if ‘Putrid Black’ is just another designer colour in the Fowler Ware range.
They should think again — and leave the room locked and barred for at least a week. Like their undies, it may need a thorough resting.
The Baby Club
The 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.
The Too-Hard Basket
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 wrig
gling 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.
6
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.
Competitive Whingeing
Jocasta 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:
Mr 40: Dead-tired man, sleeps badly, fed up with constant asthma attacks, did his back in moving the fridge, hates his boss and can hardly walk from the pain of an ingrowing toenail. Career, by the way, is at a dead end.
We can only thank God that he’s found his perfect match in:
Ms 40: Put-upon woman, with wide variety of health problems, who missed the train today by 30 seconds. Her career is in crisis, she hates her own body, and her back is stuffed because her cheap husband won’t buy a firmer bed.
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.
The Straights Mardi Gras
It’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.
People in Elastic-Waisted Pants
They’re back! This is the support group for heterosexual men and women who prefer clothing that has a bit of give, especially in the waist department. ‘For too long our clothes have been in the closet — particularly my trackie daks and sloppy joes’, says club president Amanda of Five Dock. ‘Now, thanks to PEP, I’m letting comfort be my guide, even at work — whatever the hurtful comments of the fashion Nazis. Liberating? You bet!’
For the float, Amanda has once again arranged a spectacular display of loose-fitting leisure wear — much of it with elastic expanders stitched into the sides.
A radical fringe of the group has refused to march, however, citing concerns about what’s being left locked in the closet. ‘Ugh Boots, for instance,’ said a spokesman.
Blokes Who Prefer to be Taciturn
Societal pressure is a terrible thing — especially when every popular magazine is insisting that blokes open up and express their feelings. But what of those who were born taciturn and tongue-tied? Admits Ellen, the wife of one member: ‘It’s been hard to set
up a political movement on behalf of Australia’s taciturn blokes, as no-one ever wants to be spokesman.’
Club meetings, she says, tend to be fairly quiet affairs. ‘A few years ago, they had a bit of a problem when Michael started to talk about his hostile feelings towards his father, but the rest of the guys just stared nervously at the floor, and Mike soon came to his senses. Ever since, it’s been great.’
Simplicity is the mark of this float: just five blokes sitting on the back of a flat-top truck, keeping their own counsel, and taking occasional sips of beer. Would they like to see more respect for taciturn men? The men shift awkwardly from foot to foot: ‘Oh, it’s no big deal, but, yeah, that would be alright.’
The Knitting Nannas
A radical group of elderly knitters from Box Hill, all of whom openly share needles. The float is preceded by a marching band of young grandchildren, all wearing Aran jumpers with three arms.
Men Who Build Verandas
This is a group of men from Adelaide’s south west who finds personal self-expression by building onto their homes. A rumpus room, a bloody huge barbecue, or a new veranda. ‘We know it’s daggy — but we don’t give a stuff,’ says the float’s banner. Don’t expect the TV cameras to get too close to this float. Each man has plastered it with a close-up photo of their latest veranda. ‘It’s great,’ says one, ‘to get out here and finally compare the size of our decks.’
Kids Who’ve Been Sucked Into Consumerism
‘We try not to feel like we’re victims,’ says organiser Luke, aged seven, of Hobart, ‘but we know we are.’ Imagine it yourself: eating McDonalds, watching cable TV and playing Nintendo. What sort of life is that? ‘And yet,’ admits Luke, ‘we find ourselves wanting it.’ Whatever happened to the old pleasures — playing cricket, or riding a bike? Says Luke: ‘Tonight we’re going to reclaim them, riding ahead of the parade on a phalanx of old-fashioned bicycles.’
Organisers believe the group’s name, Tykes on Bikes, is sure to catch on.
People Who Have a Good Laugh Over the Food and Style Sections of the Newspaper
In Bed with Jocasta Page 10
