CHAPTER NINE:
WIND BENEATH MY MINGE
‘Ruthie, breeeeeeeathe,’ Ralph said calmly.
I’d just finished relating the experience to my three friends, and was hyperventilating a little.
‘Show me the finger.’ Maxi grabbed it, examined it closely and dug her nail into the side of the lump.
‘Ouch!’ I pulled my hand away.
‘It was just a fluid blister.’
‘I feel bad,’ said Vette. ‘Some present, huh?’
‘No, no, no! Look. Thank you, guys. I actually do feel relaxed ... now that I know this is nothing,’ I said holding up my finger.
Ralph was staring at me, his brows drawn together in thoughtful contemplation. ‘You’ll be thirty.’
‘Huh? W-what are you talking about?’
‘Your next birthday that falls on a Sunday will be your thirtieth.’
‘Cool. You can stop stressing. For the next five years, at least,’ said Maxi.
‘Hmm ... I could do with a little de-stressing right now. I think I might book myself in for a massage.’ Obviously, Ralph was still preoccupied with my physical description of Dee.
‘Are you crazy? She’s got a wart on her that’s like another limb!’
‘I don’t have any problem with extra appendages, only missing ones.’ Still, Ralph shelved the idea. Sticking with swimming and sunbaking as a means of de-stressing was cheaper.
After having washed off the massage oil in the shower, I re-oiled with tanning lotion, and smelling like desiccated coconut, I stretched out on the sunlounger in between Vette and Ralph. I couldn’t completely relax, though. Pity I hadn’t been able to wash the memory of Baumschlager down the drain. I blamed him outright for my dermatosiophobia, but that Scheißkerl was also indirectly linked to the birth of yet another one of my obsessive fears.
‘Do you remember that bus incident with Baumschlager?’ I asked my friends.
Ralph and Vette snickered. Maxi said, ‘No.’ She looked at me blankly. Strange. We shared all our memorable experiences.
‘Grade seven. Twelve years old. Summer. Swimming lessons. You don’t remember me telling you about it?’
‘Er, vaguely. Must have been the summer I was away with the fam. Anyway, remind me.’
So I did.
It was sports day. During summer, sports day entailed compulsory swimming lessons for all upper primary school children. Each Thursday morning, we were bussed to Henley Beach Public Pool for our lesson. At the end of one of these, I was in the change room with all the other girls. We were getting out of our wet bathers and back into our uniforms, but I couldn’t find my underpants. I distinctly remembered rolling them up and putting them in my bag when I changed into my swimmers, so clearly, someone had taken them. Who the hell steals someone else’s underpants? Dowdy, grey, school regulation bloomers at that. The three upper primary teachers who accompanied us that day were male, so I wasn’t about to approach them to find out if there was a lost property box at the pool.
‘Nope, no lost property box. Why? What have you lost?’
‘My underpants.’
‘What colour are they?’
‘Grey.’
‘HAS ANYONE SEEN A PAIR OF GREY UNDIES FLOATING AROUND?’
Even as only an imagined exchanged, it was too terrible to contemplate. I was upset and agitated, which might have been why it never occurred to me just to slip my bathers back on and put my uniform over the top. Hard to think rationally when you’re bummed out. Sharon Wilson, one of the girls in my class, noticed I was near tears.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked sympathetically.
‘Not really.’ I confided the situation to her.
‘Oh no.’ She put her hand on my arm. What a sensitive girl. Or maybe not. ‘Geez ... hope ya don’t shit yerself. There’s nothin’ to catch it!’
Only twelve and already exercising critical thinking; Sharon Wilson was destined to go places. Me, I couldn’t see a future beyond crossing the footpath to get to the bus because the Anemoi were howling with laughter.
Those balmy wind gods had circulated a gentle, happy little breeze early in the morning, but now, they ramped it up. They must have all snorted a hallucinogen, and were puffing out a willy-willy—a dust storm. Big whooshes of air picked up and tossed around littered bus tickets and ice cream wrappers, willy-nilly—up, down, all over the place. And so, knicker-less, tight-sphinctered, weak-kneed, coughing from the dust, and desperately clutching the sides of my uniform to stop it from billowing out around me, I inched towards the front door of the bus. I made it up the steps without mishap. But danger lay ahead.
Dieter Baumschlager had positioned himself in an aisle seat. He had gone from being the butt of every joke, to one of the cool kids. He’d lost the knitted lederhosen, but now had even more warts (he must have cranked up the number of times he jerked off). And although he still repulsed all the girls, he’d curried favour with the boys in the class one day when he ruler-flicked a girl (you know, flicked up a girl’s skirt to sneak a peek at her undies). Dieter acted as if he invented this. Newsflash Kackbratze: Boys have been trying to look under girls’ dresses since time immemorial.
The warthog was sitting six rows from the front of the bus. And because the first eight rows of seats were all taken, there was no avoiding walking past him. For me, on this particular day, Baumschlager’s ruler was far more dangerous than his warts. He was running his index finger along the top edge of the twelve inches of wood, which was probably four times more than he himself would ever manage to get up in the plateau phase. His beady little eyes darted left and right as my classmates filed past him. In this moment, holding his wart-encrusted hand looked like a reasonable trade-off between the lesser of two evils. What made things so much worse was that Baumschlager was sitting next to Andrew Hannan. I had a huge crush on Andrew, and hoped that one day he would see my private parts, but not for a while, certainly not today, and not like this.
I looked on in horror as Baumschlager successfully ruler-flicked the girl walking in front of me. She was infuriated, but at least she had underpants on. He then instantly cast his eyes over me. I’ve never known fear quite like it, not before then, nor since. In that moment, though, something miraculous happened.
Our primal responses to threatening situations are ancient and universal, and fear eventually gives way to anger. What was about to take place could have inspired a particularly haunting scene from The Silence of the Lambs. Both novel and film were years away from publication and production, but I could have been the model for Hannibal Lecter’s prey, Catherine Martin Baker. Taunted by the monstrous Lecter, Catherine sits, terror-stricken, cowering in the bottom of his dark, damp well as she awaits her ghastly fate until, managing to take possession of Lecter’s prized white toy poodle, Precious, she threatens its doggyhood. The tables have turned.
On that bus, as I awaited my ghastly fate, I managed to take possession of Baumschlager’s prized ruler. With adrenaline pumping, I could easily have snapped it in half, but I would have to do this over my raised knee. Shit-scared or not, I started thinking with both feet on the ground (only a moron would lift their leg under these circumstances). So, as I morphed from a bootlicking, whimpering fawn into a hissing, snarling beast, unleashing profanities on him, I placed the tip of the ruler within a hair’s breadth of his private parts, and threatened his precious, developing manhood. The tables had turned.
For once, I didn’t give a crap what ‘the neighbours’ would think. And granted, my approach wouldn’t get me a date with Andrew Hannan or any other boy in the class (if I were old enough to date), but it warded off Baumschlager. He’d now think twice before toying with me.
I made it back to school without incident, but then I feigned illness so I could go home. No girl should have to sit through a lunch break and the afternoon lessons with an unsheltered fanny.
‘And you haven’t gone commando since!’ Ralph smiled.
‘Well ... not when I’m wearing a dress, any
way.’
Ralph knew when I first got my period and when I started wearing a bra. There wasn’t much he didn’t know about me. But he didn’t have to know everything.
He stared at me in surprise. And kept staring. A little half-smile broke out on his face.
‘What?’
‘Um, nothing. Nothing.’ He looked flustered, but he then volunteered, ‘I’m going commando right now!’
‘Of course you are; you’re wearing bathers. Nobody wears undies with bathers, duh!’ Maxi said.
‘No, but bathers usually have a lining for support. These don’t.’
Thank God they were Hang Ten board shorts, long enough so he couldn’t hang three outside of them (again).
‘Did we really need to know this?’
‘I like to share.’
‘Yes ... we remember.’ Maxi smiled at a reddening Ralph, then she said to Vette and me, ‘Hey, d’ya remember those times Alphabet Zach “shared” at the Schwartz?’
The Schwartz was a Jewish clubhouse where we used to go in our early teens. The adults hung out in the community hall playing cards and drinking coffee; the kids hung out in the games room or at the tennis courts, the pool or the playground; and Zach Cohen hung out on the playground equipment. He wore a little pair of very short red and green checked bathers with no lining (the exhibitionist probably removed it with the stitch picker from his mother’s sewing box). Zach used to swing like a gorilla on the monkey bar, and his nuts would swing like a gorilla’s* outside his bathers when he hung and swung off all fours (*this is telling because gorillas are not all that well hung. Their testicle size is inversely proportional to their overall size, i.e. the bigger they are, the smaller their balls). And if Zach thought his display would make the girls want to shag him, he was sorely mistaken. It was not a good look; he should have tried beating his chest, instead.
‘You really think he did it on purpose?’ Vette asked.
Maxi gave her a wry smile. ‘Does King Kong have balls the size of unsoaked lentils?’
No doubt. It’s probably what made him so incredibly ornery. And after dating Zach, I knew first-hand that like King Kong, he had a bit of a short fuse.
‘I dunno,’ said Vette. ‘I’m still not convinced. I can’t believe that a guy would do that intentionally, especially knowing that the adults might wander over to the playground. But if you didn’t know that everything had dropped out, I mean, wouldn’t you feel it?’ Vette asked Ralph.
Really? You’re asking Ralph?
He replied cautiously. ‘You would feel it if it was cold and windy.’
Yeah, and your balls would shrink, but I could see that Ralph himself was shrinking from the direction this conversation was taking. I jumped in and steered it back to my original point.
‘Speaking of wind, it was just after that episode at Henley Pool that my fear of it became a phobia. Um ... I forget what that one’s call—’
‘Anemophobia.’ Ralph didn’t miss a beat. ‘But, uh, technically, that’s not just a fear of wind, as in draughts, gales, breezes, etcetera.’ Ralph paused, looked at us as if waiting for a drum roll or for one of us to say ‘what else?’ Neither happened, so he continued. ‘It can also be a fear of swallowing air, you know.’
Odd fear, but then I thought about it. ‘Oh ... I wish Joe had that.’
‘Why? He’s entertaining.’
‘For you, maybe!’
Ralph chuckled. ‘Remember that night I was at your place for dinner? It was about a week after the pool incident. Sylvia had made spaghetti, and Joe suctioned his noodles with so much force the sauce flew everywhere—’
‘Uh-huh. And then he took that business call.’
Joe ran his ‘for sale’ ads in Wednesday’s Advertiser (as well as Saturday’s). During the day, he fielded enquiries about the listed cars while he was at work. After-hours calls mostly came between six and seven o’clock while we were having dinner. The phone was on the purpose-built bar next to the dining table, so we had to be quiet when he took a call. Without fail, thirty seconds into it he’d drop a bomb ... a lulu.
It was like living with Pavlov’s dog: the phone rang at sunset—the stimulus; the ‘twilight’ fart came within a specified timeframe after Joe answered, he’d tap the receiver a couple of times and say to the caller, ‘Ooh, there must be some interference in the line’—a double-barrelled conditioned response. After that, he’d calmly resume his sales pitch. Pity he never advanced to conditioned suppression. He could have saved himself the trouble of having to cover his arse. Then again, Myron and I would have missed out. On these nights, we’d cramp with laughter (although, only after Joe hung up)—our conditioned response. On these nights, Joe was spokesperson for the gods of beneficial winds.
That particular night Ralph was over for dinner, the stimulus occurred not long after we started eating.
‘’
‘Joe Roth speaking.’
Silence.
‘Yes ... the EK Holden? Mmm hmm ... two-tone paintwork, automatic transmission. It’s only six years old, only nine thousand miles on the clock and it’s in top condition.’
... Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one ...
‘’
Tap tap.
‘Are you there? Seems to be a bit of static in the line.’
Very long silence.
‘Mmm, yes, uh-huh ... yes, I’m Ruth’s father.’
Silence, again. Then Joe smiled.
‘Ah yes, Mr Winston. Of course! What a small world.’
Silence, one more time.
‘No, I wouldn’t miss visiting day. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Shit.
On this night, the gods of destructive winds had blown in, blown out and blown through.
‘Why can’t mum come tomorrow?’ I whined. This must have been one of the few times I really wanted Sylvia.
‘Because I have to go to Myron’s visiting day.’
Despite being only eleven months older than me, boy genius was two years ahead in school (he had skipped a year). Myron was in his second year of high school, which was apparently more important than my last year of primary school. And I was about to go out with a bang.
Mr Winston, my teacher, was a short, bald, heavyset man. His thick, grey moustache completely covered his top lip. With a gruff manner and a raspy voice, Mr Winston was not the sort of person you messed with. The following morning when I had taken my place at my desk next to the window, he glared at me and raised one eyebrow. I quickly looked away and out the window, and saw a group of parents, with Joe in the lead, making their way across the quadrangle towards the classroom. Mr Winston, who was standing near the window, was also watching the approaching coterie. Arms folded, rocking back and forth on his feet, without taking his eyes off my father and without missing a beat, Mr Winston announced for all to hear, ‘Charcoal tablets would do wonders for your father’s flatulence problem, Miss Roth.’
Fuck.
The class roared with laughter. Joe was already an embarrassment to me. Flatulence aside, he had an accent, and his dress sense was appalling. Today, he was wearing a brushed nylon shirt in a shade of asparagus, khaki green crimplene trousers and an artichoke coloured tie. With his sunburnt balding pate and face, he looked like a king-sized, pimento-stuffed Spanish olive. And, he thought it was okay to kiss me in front of my peers. Disgusting! When visiting day was over, as I watched this vision that was my father crossing the schoolyard on his way out, Shaun Farr started chanting, ‘There goes your farter.’ The rest of the class joined in and Mr Bloody Winston did nothing to discourage it.
Although my friends and I could laugh about it now, at the time, what made it so much worse was that Joe thought the whole thing was funny. The humiliation stuck. And after that, I was terrified of accidentally farting in class.
‘So ... your phobia became, er, shall we say, inflated as a result?’ Ralph asked.
‘Huh?’
‘Well, wind is wind, whether it’s blowing up your dress or out of your
heinie or—’
‘Or you’re swallowing it!’ Seems my anemophobia had become more broad-spectrum. And at Maxi’s granny’s funeral, it became cast in stone. I turned to look at Maxi. I was about to spill the beans.
CHAPTER TEN:
AN ILL WIND SUCKS
Maxi’s eighty-year-old grandmother’s funeral was the first one I’d been to. Both Sylvia and Joe provided a buffer against death when we were growing up. If one of their friends or acquaintances died, it was discussed in hushed tones, and it was taken for granted that we kids would not go to the funeral. That’s just the way it was back then. But at twenty-four, I was an adult and my friend needed me.
I was told it’s a good idea to get to a funeral early so you can pay your respects to the bereaved. I was inside the chapel fifteen minutes before the service was due to start and I followed everyone’s cue as they filed past the mourners. Of course, the family members were upset—particularly Maxi’s father. Granny Ida was his mother.
Like me, Maxi grew up thinking her father was God. But she thought his mother was Godzilla; she loathed her. Yet, as I stood in front of Maxi, she teared up, a sob catching in her throat. I was thrown at first, but then I hugged her tightly and made soothing noises.
‘Blood’s thicker than water,’ she whispered and a keening wail escaped her lips.
What! What was this? Cliché-ing and drama queening were out of character for Maxi. Then she discreetly pinched my bum, looked at me and winked. And I knew that for as long as the funeral took, Maxi would be more like Sylvia’s protégée than I could ever be. I was almost jealous. Theatrics—one more thing I wasn’t good at.
I solemnly walked back down the chapel to about the tenth pew, which was empty. I sat at the far end next to the stained glass window, but realised too late that it was probably a stupid, ill-considered choice just like at Zelda’s wedding ceremony. The pew filled up and the service was about to begin.
Odyssey In A Teacup Page 11
