by Wendy Harmer
Carrie had fallen into a shuddering heap with Claire’s fingers inside her feeling the pulse of her orgasm. But when Carrie had wanted to return the favour, Claire backed off. Within another hour Claire was downstairs and had recruited a Chilean bongo player to finish her off in a broom cupboard.
By the time Claire wrenched her mind back from the Blue Mountains to the conversation at hand, Gillian was giving men another serve, ‘Yep, they’ll never get over the fact that we’re the ones who give birth. They’ve all got womb envy, as I think Germaine Greer once said—’
Claire was distracted at that moment by the welcome sight of Steve Jensen in the doorway. Steve was a classic bad boy. The night had suddenly become a whole lot more interesting. Steve was winking and inclining his head at Claire in a code they both well understood. ‘Back in a sec,’ she gabbled.
She watched Steve manoeuvre his way through the throbbing crowd and, after a discreet interval, followed him. Inside the silent pearly shell of the bathroom, Claire leaned her back against the door and sighed. She watched as he bent over the bathroom bench and racked up lines of cocaine with practised efficiency.
‘Thunderbirds International Rescue arrived just in time, huh?’ he said as he busied himself.
‘God, that Barbara can be hard going,’ she breathed. ‘I mean, I like her, but she’s so . . .’
‘Fucked up?’ Steve turned and held out a rolled note.
‘It was a crap time for her husband to leave her. At fifty what chance does she have now of finding a new man?’
‘None. She scares the shit out of me.’
‘Most adult women scare the shit out of you, Steve.’
Steve grinned at her and sniffed. ‘Yup. That’s why I like ’em young and impressionable. Just down off the farm.’
Claire laughed. ‘You are a bastard!’
‘Thanks, Claire.’
Claire leaned over the bench and saw with a twinge of guilt that Helen’s Chanel skincare products had been cleared to make space for the drugs. If her theory held true, that you could tell what a man would be like in bed by the way he chopped out, then it was no wonder Steve was still single. She saw two sad little lines laid out with geometric precision.
Claire inhaled. She didn’t come across drugs that often these days but, if she had the choice between an after-dinner line and an after-dinner mint, the line would always win. But for how long? Meg had said it was time to put away childish things. This had to be one of them.
‘Look at us, Steve,’ she said. ‘At our age. Do you think we’ll be doing this in the twilight home for old folks?’
‘Fuck! I hope so. I hope that by then it will be legal and they’ll be handing it out in little plastic bags from Kellogs, to sprinkle on our muesli. More fun than the daily shot of Valium.’
‘So,’ she said, throwing back her head and sniffing, ‘any adventures in loveland recently?’
‘Just the usual assortment of anorexics, bulimics and neurotics. You know women are always whingeing about there not being any good men left, well the same goes for us.’
Steve leaned back on the bench and folded his arms across his chest. He seemed to be looking for sympathy, but he wasn’t getting any from Claire. She knew better. She knew that for years Steve had taken enough drugs to kill a brown dog. His life was, literally, a string of car wrecks. The last Porsche he owned he’d wrapped around a gum tree on the way back from Kangaroo Valley. Two of his ex-girlfriends were in re-hab. If there was any justice in the world, he should have been dead, or at least looked like Diego Maradona. Instead, he still looked unbelievably cute.
His dark hair was cut short and flicked up at the front and he regarded Claire with mischievous brown eyes. He was wearing a pistachio green shirt (Paul Smith, Claire guessed) over a pair of well-worn jeans. His bare feet were slipped into tan and white tennis shoes with lime-green laces (Paul Smith again). He ran his own boutique advertising agency (she couldn’t imagine how). And, most importantly, he was forty-three, the age at which he could help himself to the buffet of women anywhere from twenty to fifty. Lucky, lucky Steve.
Claire knew he was a dedicated player. And, now that she was caught up in a thrilling game of pursuit and capture herself, she was reminded of the excitement of being single. Perhaps it was the curse of a lot of people of her generation. Once you’d spent enough time out there in the hunt, you had to have a good reason to put your gun back in the rack. For women it was your ovaries measuring time like a metronome. For men like Steve the benefits of sticking with one woman were becoming increasingly obscure.
When Claire had been introduced to him by Charlie at their wedding, he had had a steady date and it looked as if he was about to do just that—stick with one woman. That relationship had fizzled after three years and here he was, still single. Of course he had come up with a rationalisation for it.
‘I reckon there are a couple of ballots,’ he said. ‘The first lot of good women get married off in their twenties; the next round get snapped up in their thirties. And what’s left over after that? Just that—leftovers. Married women are the only way to go, I’ve decided.’
‘Holy hell, Steve! That’s a grim way of looking at things.’
‘Well, look at you. Charlie’s always telling us he got the last good woman in Sydney.’
Claire turned to check her lipstick in the mirror. She didn’t feel like a good woman.
‘No, Charlie’s got me wrong,’ she answered.
Fortunately, Steve was only listening to himself. ‘I’ve worked out that my ideal woman is in her early thirties. A hot-looking chick with a killer bod who’s climbing the walls because her husband or boyfriend is out of town. It’s a win-win situation.’
Claire felt her stomach cartwheel and realised that the description fitted Connor exactly. Could she be a female version of Steve? Surely not. She’d got married, had a baby. But she was still planning to have Connor. Did that make her more virtuous than Steve? Or less?
She didn’t want to dwell on it and started talking, ‘I never could understand why you didn’t marry Corinne. You two were brilliant together.’
‘Big bum. Bad hair.’
Claire couldn’t be shocked by anything Steve said. She’d spent too much time with the boys. ‘Oh right. So you’re looking for the “good woman” with the great bum and the bouncy hair. Like one of your shampoo ads. I think my sympathy for you just ran out, you weasel,’ she teased.
‘I’m not looking for sympathy—just a little understanding,’ Steve laughed.
‘And at this point I drop my knickers and climb into bed with you—is that how it usually goes?’
‘Pretty much.’ He turned to the mirror and ran his fingers through his gelled hair. Claire shook her head in exasperation.
‘So how are you enjoying the party?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Claire sighed. ‘I know teenagers are supposed to feel like this, but sometimes I feel that I’m of that age where— and this sounds ridiculous—but I’m in between. Like I don’t fit in anywhere.’
‘That’s cos we were kids in the seventies,’ Steve said authoritatively. ‘It’s the problem we have in advertising. How do you reach people like us? Although we’re always lumped in with the baby boomers, we don’t identify with many of their experiences. By the time I was a teenager, the boomers were well on their way. They’d marched straight from a Vietnam moratorium into an AV Jennings home with carport and conversation pit.
‘Since then they’ve been hogging all the good jobs, sucking down resources and breathing up most of the air—if you believe what you read. And then they gave birth to the Generation Xers, the cynical “Me, Me, Me” generation.’
‘That feels about right,’ said Claire. ‘So we are . . .?’
‘Wedged in between. I like to call us the Generation that Taste Forgot.’
‘Meaning?’
‘OK. Who was your favourite pop group when you were a teenager?’
‘Um . . . I was too young for the Beatle
s, so it was The Monkees.’
‘Check! See. By the time we came along, the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour had transmogrified into the Partridge Family.’
‘Oh God, I adored David Cassidy.’
‘Bingo! Did you read The Female Eunuch?’
‘Nope. Too busy taking the piss out of the femmos . . . and fucking my brains out.’
‘Exactly! Did you ever own any of the following—a pet rock, a boob tube, a Mao Tse-tung tea towel, a pair of purple jumbo cords or a transistor in a Coke can?’
Claire laughed. ‘Yes, yes. I had all that crap!’
‘That’s right, crap. We were the first generation to be delivered a serious batch of trash by mass manufacturing. And we bought it. We didn’t grow up with any -isms worth shit. Not feminism, pacifism, communism, environmentalism. Just consumerism. And now, when we’re in our mid-forties and supposed to be growing up, we want more. We don’t wanna let go.’
This seemed such a rational explanation for her obsession with Connor, and how she was shocked to find she was peri-menopausal, that Claire didn’t want to believe it. ‘That can’t be right,’ she said.
‘You paid good money for a pet rock—what the fuck would you know?’
‘But you make us sound as if we’re a generation of self-obsessed pains in the arse.’
‘No, no! I reckon that, considering the amount of change we experienced—as much as any generation before or since—we have handled it really well. I reckon we’re the bemused decade. Not cynical, not bleeding hearts. I reckon out of every generation we’ve laughed the most. It’s only now that it’s starting to look like a sad case of arrested development.’
‘Mind you,’ said Claire, ‘Arrested Development, good band.’
‘Figured you’d like them. Nice girls’ FM radio rap.’
‘Hey! Get . . .’
Claire and Steve were startled by the muffled sound of applause coming through the bathroom door.
‘Shite, the speeches!’ Steve grabbed Claire’s hand and dragged her into the hallway. With a quick smooch they parted and insinuated themselves at opposite edges of the guests assembled in the living room.
Charlie had obviously just given one of his celebrated introductions and had handed the floor to Phil. His speech made Claire cry. Then again, she always cried at birthday speeches. There was something so poignant about watching a human being trying to express their humble gratitude for just being alive. A halting speech at a party was such an inadequate gesture in the face of such a big concept. Claire thought they should be sacrificing a goat, standing around a bonfire in body paint or paddling a sacred canoe to an island graveyard.
Tonight a choreographed rendition of ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’ from Phil’s daughters was about as close as they would get to a corroboree. She clapped and laughed along anyway.
Claire tried to remember her own father’s fiftieth birthday. She drew a blank, even though she must have been twenty-one and engaged—married?—to Ben. Claire was no different to any other child. She was the centre of the universe. She couldn’t remember a time when her parents weren’t old.
She wondered when Maddie would realise that she was a good decade older than most of the other mothers at school. Probably never. Although Maddie had peered at her very closely one day and observed that Mummy had ‘burrows’ around her eyes.
Much later that night Claire found herself sitting around the table the grandmothers and great-aunts had vacated. The party was winding down. She could see Charlie on the terrace, engrossed in a conversation with Miss Emerald Green Satin. She guessed (correctly) that the young woman was entranced to meet Charlie Wallace, the famous radio announcer. She wondered when the penny would drop that Charlie had a wife. Oh . . . right about—Charlie looked over and waved; she waved back— now! Did Claire imagine it, or did she see two perky breasts deflate slightly?
Sitting around the table in various states of mellow inebriation were Patrick, Francie and Steve. The latter was taking the edge off his head full of coke with a joint.
‘So,’ said Claire, slapping her hands on the table. She was feeling quite chatty now, having had a couple more medications from Dr Steve. ‘I have a proposition for the group.’
Claire was, of course, well known for putting up one of her homemade theories for discussion.
‘OK, here we go. What’s on your mind, Claire?’ Patrick the barrister had a wonderfully analytical brain and Claire loved to hear his views on the world.
‘Yep. Let’s hear it,’ said Francie, a journalist who was working in the office of a local politician. She too had a lively mind.
Steve refilled his glass with sticky dessert wine and sat back to play his usual role of agent provocateur.
‘What’s the best night of sex you’ve ever had?’ Claire drained her wineglass with a dramatic flourish and reached for more.
There was a pause while the three of them considered this.
‘I’m hoping I haven’t had it yet,’ said Steve. ‘I hope I’m having it at about 2 am with that chick in the green dress Charlie is warming up for me.’
‘Wishful thinking, Steve-o,’ said Francie archly. ‘You’re past your sexual prime. I’m guessing you had your best night ever back in the late eighties and your drug-addled brain can’t remember it.’
‘That’s probably true . . . unfortunately,’ Steve agreed.
Patrick removed his glasses and thoughtfully chewed on them. It was a stagey courtroom pose they had all seen television lawyers use. Claire, Francie and Steve looked at Patrick and waited for him to make his opening remarks. Perhaps even call his wife as a witness.
‘It’s a bad question, Claire,’ he said.
‘Really?’ Claire asked. ‘Why?’
‘Because it’s too broad. You see, sex is good for different reasons. There’s all different kinds of sex and trying to compare them is like trying to compare apples and oranges.’
‘Or melons and bananas,’ said Steve, ever the naughty schoolboy.
‘OK then—what are all the different types of sex?’ Claire was pleased she’d at least engaged Patrick’s mind.
‘Well, let’s think. There’s affair sex, revenge sex, making-up sex. Making-up sex is something I seem to be having a lot of experience with at the moment,’ he said, looking over at his wife Laura by the pool.
‘What about breaking-up sex?’ Francie offered. ‘Or, even better, going back for one last bonk?’
‘That’s never good,’ said Steve. ‘It starts off OK but inevitably it ends up being truly shithouse.’
‘But there’s usually something so bittersweet about it that makes it utterly memorable,’ said Francie, who was obviously speaking from experience.
‘Are we talking memorable or good? Cos I’ve had plenty of memorable nights I wish I could forget,’ Steve said ruefully.
Francie continued, ‘What about love?’
‘Love you, like you, pleased to meet you. It doesn’t have a lot to do with mind-blowing sex,’ said Patrick. ‘Pure unbridled lust will certainly get you over the line.’
Claire instantly suspected that perhaps the reason Patrick and Laura were having arguments was because he was indulging himself in a little pro-bono unbridled lust.
‘I’ve had plenty of one-night stand sex.’ Steve again.
‘But that’s not really a type of sex, because you only know it’s one night in retrospect,’ Patrick pointed out.
‘Unless you go into it on that understanding. Then it’s got to be no different from “one last night”,’ Steve clarified.
Patrick had to agree.
‘How about anonymous sex?’ said Claire, instantly regretting she had mentioned it. Now she would have to explain what she meant.
‘Ooh, Claire,’ said Francie, who could be relied upon not to let the moment pass. ‘I’ve had “complete stranger” and “I hardly know you” sex, but “anonymous”? Do you mean where you never find out who it is? Tell us more!’
Claire felt obliged to explain si
nce she’d raised it. ‘I remember this night, years ago when I was at a Nirvana concert, and I was on the balcony bending over this railing and it was pretty crowded—’
‘That was me,’ Steve cut in. Everyone laughed. Claire was relieved she didn’t have to go into forensic detail.
‘Can we think of any more?’ asked Patrick, who was warming to the theme.
‘Well, there’s first-time sex,’ Francie ventured.
‘Now hang on.’ Patrick held up his hand. ‘Are we talking good sex or bad sex? Because when you start going down that list . . .’
‘Yeah. There’s a long list of bad sex,’ said Francie. ‘How about obligatory sex?’
Now Claire asked Francie to elaborate.
‘I mean when you are in a relationship and you just do it to get it over with, or when you’ve spent the evening with a guy you don’t really like but you think you owe him one anyway.’
‘Jeez, Francie. You want to go out for dinner?’ Steve was at it again.
Francie ignored him and continued. ‘Or there’s political sex. By that I mean sex you have with your boss to climb the company ladder.’
Steve was quick off the mark. ‘You haven’t fucked that deadshit politician you work for, have you, Francie?’
‘Grow up, Steve!’
Uh-huh! Direct hit. Score another one for Steve.
‘How about same-sex sex?’ offered Claire.
‘Well, you see,’ said Patrick, ‘now you’re getting into the difficulty of classification because same-sex sex could come under any of the other headings we just mentioned.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
‘And in fact that leads us into the whole area of experimentation and perversion. Sometimes sex is about exploring your personal parameters. To see what you like and don’t like. Maybe it’s more about your personal intent. It might be better to try to classify sex into emotional categories, like . . .’
‘Like . . .?’ parroted Claire, who was intrigued.
