Odyssey In A Teacup

by Paula Houseman

  At three o’clock, we were standing in front of a stately looking two-storey Mediterranean-style house with a sloping red tiled roof, white stucco walls, arched windows, and a black wrought iron gate. Already, I felt a little out of my league, but I bit the bullet and elegantly climbed the terracotta-tiled steps that were flanked by red and pink geraniums. Not so elegantly, I slipped on a slimy stray leaf on the top step, landing on all fours.

  ‘Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo.’ Reuben made monkey noises and scratched under his armpit.

  ‘Oh, I can always rely on you for support, can’t I?’

  Was I surprised? No. It was Sunday. God and man were off duty; life was unattended. Reuben must have realised I was ready to turn around and go home, so he became solicitous and helped me up. As we crossed the four-columned portico to the double-entry front doors that were open and welcoming, I regained my composure and sashayed in to an imposing foyer.

  It had white walls, white polished marble flooring, a small chandelier, a fine gilt-framed mirror on one wall, and on the opposite wall, an odd choice of oil painting of a caricaturised obese woman with three caricaturised obese kids. The kids were dressed colourfully, but she wore a black dress and was holding an obese cat. The signature on the bottom of the painting read ‘Botero’. I recognised the artist’s name. Just that morning, I’d read an article in the paper about Fernando Botero, a Colombian artist who paints people as ‘rotund and swollen to monumental proportions’. I started to hyperventilate a little, but then I reminded myself it was only a painting of obese people; it wasn’t even a portrait. Real people did not pose for this; the figures were parodies. Finally, I calmed down, but when I turned and walked into the adjoining lounge room, I started to hyperventilate. A lot.

  Fuck me!

  And yet ... there was not a single obese person in sight. Just an obese collection of stilettoed, bottle-blonde females. Like the woman in the painting, these women were all dressed in black, but unlike the woman in the painting, they all looked malnourished (and I thought I had a dysfunctional relationship with food). These stick figures were hermetically sealed in sateen, sequinned little dresses, tight as chipolata skins clinging to and accentuating the bony outcrops that were their hips. But skinny didn’t cause me to breathe more rapidly—their attire was the problem. The invitation said ‘smart casual’. It looked like dress codes had changed in my social absence and nobody had informed me. I felt underdressed, old, fat and ugly. I shared this with Reuben, who tried to assuage me:

  ‘You are not fat and ugly.’

  I am seriously married to a moron—a bull in a china shop in danger of losing his own testicles.

  Later, though. For now, I was rooted to the spot, watching these women waddle in their swaddle. It felt like we’d stumbled upon a penguin colony. Only this particular species was accessorised with obese diamonds and handbag husbands. But what made everything so much worse was that the waiters weaving their way through the crowd were dressed in white shirts, and trousers with a miniature blue and white hounds-tooth pattern. Oh dear absent God, He who had belatedly granted my wish to fit in somewhere. I felt like the butt of a cosmic joke.

  A panic attack was coming on. I was shallow breathing at full tilt ... ah-ha-ah-ha-ah-ha. I remembered how Ralph cupping his hands over my mouth and nose had helped me at Zelda’s wedding. But he wasn’t here, so I slapped my own hand over my airways. Yet, all I got for my troubles was red va-va-voom lipstick on my palms. I then remembered reading about the value of approaching difficult situations with a sense of child-like wonder. So I tried wondering (child-like) how these penguins managed to go to the toilet in their very, very tight dresses. Maybe they used wee-wee funnels—disposable, waterproof, cone-shaped doodads that women climbing Everest pee into so they don’t have to expose their doodahs to potential frostbite. And, they can pee standing up. But what if these penguins need to take a dump? I child-like wondered. A no-brainer: these women were all skeletal, and when you don’t eat, you don’t shit.

  Never mind all that. This afternoon tea experience was going to be a lot harder than climbing Everest. I stopped hyperventilating but I was still having trouble breathing. The air in the room was like these women. Thin. So what does one do when one has trouble breathing? One eats, because food can oxygenate.

  I signalled to a waiter hovering nearby. He glanced at me tentatively, confused (probably because he didn’t recognise me even though I was decked out like a co-worker). He gave me the once-over, and then a knowing look crossed his face. He’d no doubt registered that because I was sporting a clutch bag and I wasn’t wearing the regulation black shoes that go with the uniform, I must be a guest. Clever boy. He checked me out again, this time, probably homing in on my fat reserves—relative to these scrawnies in black, I was overweight. His job today must have felt like a thankless one; seemed he wasn’t getting any bites from the penguins, which has got to feel like a real rejection for catering staff. But I could tell he sensed that I was a safe bet. He made a beeline for me, gave me a lopsided smile and started drawing an imaginary air circle around his mouth.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You have lipstick smudges around your mouth,’ he whispered discreetly, as he handed me a serviette.

  Shit.

  I wiped my mouth, and then loaded up with two canapés from his tray. I scarfed the first, and felt a bit calmer. The second one kind of missed my mouth, the filling plopping onto the left breast pocket of my shirt. Nice. Trying to wipe it off with the serviette drove the stain deeper and wider, so I covered it by crooking my left elbow with clutch in hand resting against it. I inched my way over to Reuben, who had just finished making small talk with someone.

  ‘Can we please leave?’ I hissed in his ear like tinnitus.

  ‘What? No-no-no-no-no!’ he machine-gunned, then followed it with a torturous slow motion volley, in the way you explain a new concept to a young child or an idiot. ‘Remember. Grab. The. Bull. By. The. Balls.’ He then eyeballed me, and his head jerked back like a turkey’s. ‘What the hell is that red around your mouth? Cripes ... you look like Fred Flintstone!’

  ‘Strike three buddy, you’re out. You. Can. Kiss. Your. Balls. Goodbye. When. We. Get. Home.’

  In that moment, I would have parlayed a small bankroll he wasn’t so happy to see my zing return. But I walked away before he had a chance to respond. I felt nauseous and needed some air. We weren’t climbing Everest, so the oxygen depletion in the room was probably caused by all the bleached hair. Also, looking at the trout pouts kind of took my breath away. Their faces were as tight as their dresses. Damned upshot of too much surgical intervention. I made a mental note: If all these women’s faces are examples of Lenny’s handiwork, must remember never to go to him when my neck resembles a chicken’s wattle.

  This thinking was all well and good, but deliberating is not aerating, so, head down, I made my way through the crowd towards an exit. I briefly looked up and locked eyes with one of the penguin’s husbands. He was quite good-looking, although kind of skunk-like in appearance (his black hair had a thick streak of white just to the left of his part). He was wearing dark trousers and a white open-neck shirt. Tufts of salt and pepper chest hair curled around a dog tag pendant suspended from a silver ball chain worn around his neck. He gave me an appreciative look. Moi? He winked at me. What? You’re trifling with me, right. No? I’m in hounds-tooth for crying out loud! As I passed him, another one of the husbands handed me his empty plate!

  Oh God, please let me die—a little supplication to Him who was on hiatus.

  I made it to the door leading into the kitchen without being sick, but there, propped up against the doorjamb was a life-size Barbie doll with glazed eyes and thick, fuchsia-pink lips. A PVC Aphrodite, she looked almost life-like. She was almost life-like. I knew this because she stepped aside. I scurried through the kitchen and family room onto the patio.

  Salvation lay ahead in the form of a tall, plain-looking, limp-haired (natural) blonde standing by herself in the far corner
with a serene look on her face. She was dressed as casually as me, if not a little more unconventionally in a purple and green tie-dyed, ankle-length kaftan and brown leather sandals. She looked approachable, so I approached her.

  ‘Hi. You look familiar.’ I felt like a bloke trying out a trite pick-up line. It was enough to launch a conversation, but it was a big mistake ... a mother of a mistake. She was not of this planet (her words; not just my assessment).

  ‘I’m not of this planet. I’m actually Pleiadian. And you being magnetised to me has its purpose, which is probably to help raise your frequency.’

  How does one respond to that? Other than forming my lips into an O, I didn’t have to because another Pleiadian turned up and they hugged, so I took the opportunity to slink away. It looked like I’d gone from no air inside, to rarefied air out here, and neither was a viable alternative.

  Ralph often said that our either/or thinking was a source of many problems. I guess it didn’t have to be a case of either fitting in with the kitchen staff or standing out in amongst the penguins. I needed to add shades of grey to my black and white thinking. So, how could I be comfortable at this gathering? How could I be part of it but not get swallowed up by it?

  Aha! Thinking outside the square pays dividends. Tucked away in the corner of the L-shaped patio was a wrought iron-legged, square mosaic marble table. One of the chairs of this eight seater Tuscan setting had an odd cushion on it: a vinyl one that had a blue and white, miniature-checked pattern. Maybe the cream fabric cushion that should have been there (like on the other seven chairs) was dirty or torn and was being washed or repaired, but hot damn, this one matched my outfit! I walked over there, sat on it and started to relax. But something wasn’t quite right ...

  Oh. Shit.

  It was one of those moments that reminded me of a visit to the hairdresser, you know, when the apprentice starts to wash the ends of your hair and asks, ‘Is the water too hot?’ It always takes me a while to answer because until the water hits my scalp, I won’t know if it’s too hot. By the time the apprentice graduates, hopefully he or she will have worked out that hair doesn’t actually have any nerve endings (unless they’re Pleiadian, in which case they’ll probably argue that hair is alive). Well, the foam inside the cushion was wet! And like hair, clothes have no nerve endings, so it took a minute to register. I discreetly stood up and looked at the seat of my pants: water + dust on the cushion’s surface = a wet patch that’s a nice dark shade of grey! Oh, joy ... the afternoon just kept getting better!

  Hiding the stain on the front of my shirt hadn’t been too big a stretch, but hiding the stain on my arse ... not so easy. If I walked through the flock, I feared being the subject of ugly speculation: Psst, check out her pants. Looks like she ... hahahahaha ... I’d been there; done that.

  I used to walk home from school every afternoon with Myron (school was only ten minutes from home. Lots of kids walked home from school. It was in the days when it was safe to do so). Sylvia had told us that if we couldn’t hold on, then we should just ‘do it’ in our pants (as opposed to squatting on the footpath). Myron was perfect—never, ever peed or pooped in his pants (golden boy probably never, ever peed or shat in his nappy). But me? Unfortunately, one of my classmates was walking behind us the one and only time I couldn’t hang on. I slowed down and peed my pants. It was only because I sneezed that the flow started, and I just couldn’t stop it (only six years old and already pelvic floor issues). Well, the news spread like an infestation of crab lice. The next morning at school, I discovered I’d earned another nickname: Peepee Pongshocking.

  Pippi Longstocking was my hero. Two weeks before this incident, I’d come dressed as her for Book Week (we had to come as our favourite character). This new nickname was the brainchild of Shaun Farr. Again. I’d been happy with his Rath-Reth-Rith-Roth-Ruth tag, but this one was an affront to both Pippi and me. I loved Pippi; I aspired to be like her. I didn’t much care that I couldn’t lift my horse one-handed like her (mostly because I didn’t have a horse), but I loved that she didn’t take crap from adults. I told Shaun Farr he’d gone too far. Seemed he could only pack a punch with words, though. I biffed him on the shoulder, which somehow made his nose bleed. He cried and ran to the teacher, who sent me to the headmaster, who called Sylvia in. When I got home from school that afternoon, she sent me to my room. ‘You’re grounded!’ she yelled. Grounded? For the love of God, I was six years old! It wasn’t like I was dating.

  Anyway, I was all the more grateful that no one was around a month later when I crapped my pants—ha! I need to make it quite clear that that particular episode was also just an accident. Personally, even at such a tender age I found Sylvia’s notion of just ‘doing it’ in my pants pretty disgusting. But I’d only been toilet trained for three and a half years, which is not very long in the scheme of things. What was important is that no one saw, except Myron. He yelled at me.

  ‘Why couldn’t you just WAIT?’

  ‘It’s not my fault! It was the poo fairy.’

  ‘There IS no poo fairy ... and there’s no tooth fairy, either!’

  This last one was a low blow. I started crying. Myron tried to console me. It wasn’t because he felt bad about his disclosure, though; he was just concerned I would attract attention. Still, I cried and cried. A non-existent tooth fairy, shit-filled pants—it was all too much. I yelled at him.

  ‘Try walking a mile in MY pants!’ (Sylvia always used to say this but she said shoes instead of pants).

  Severely traumatised and uncomfortable—I felt like a little lamb with a very large dingleberry attached to its hindquarters—I sobbed pitifully all the way home. And Myron, with his sensitive gag reflex, dry-heaved all the way home.

  On this afternoon in the Schmitt backyard, I hadn’t schmitt my pants; it just looked that way. But I was no longer six, and as vacant as this crowd appeared to be, it would not have gone unnoticed. It seemed there was going to be no quick getaway; the crowd was still too, uh, thick. We were here for the long haul, so I sat back down on the vinyl cushion, my pants sucking up the seepage. Just as well skin’s waterproof; on top of it all, I wouldn’t want to be bloating from absorbing extra fluid.

  Despite my predicament, I was bored. When Joe was bored, he’d go sit at the airport and people-watch. A strange pastime, but he loved to make up stories about them, said it stimulated his imagination (his bizarre taste smacked of an already over-stimulated imagination). I’d never tried actively people-watching as a source of inspiration for my storytelling. Although, I guess when you’re making assumptions about others, which I’d been doing from the minute I got there, you’re already making up stories. I now sat, intentionally observing the guests, but couldn’t get past the striking resemblance to penguins. So it was more a question of bird-watching.

  Migration habits? Minimal—some had made it into the family room. Unlike me, not enough fat reserves to go any further. Social behaviour? Lots of trilling and air-kissing. Eating habits? Annual fasting period for some. The rest were feeding on fish appetisers ...

  Jesus, what kind of person actually makes a hobby of this? And where the hell was Reuben? It was like he heard the question and suddenly appeared. I explained my dilemma, he Bobbleheaded, and then started laughing. Not for long, though.

  ‘I need to eat!’ Enough said. He got it.

  ‘Be right back.’

  Reuben disappeared, and returned several minutes later carrying a tray of food. Reuben’s dress sense is uniquely appalling—he always ends up looking like a jarring collage in which nothing relates to anything (not quite as bad as Joe but still, a tempered version of him). Yet, Reuben had picked a tray with the same colour hors d’oeuvres garnishing my shirt pocket. In that moment, he was my own live action hero (probably akin to Batman’s sidekick, Robin, who’s decked out in red and green. Putting discordant colours together is a definite no-no. Plus, Robin wears his underpants on the outside. I don’t care what anyone says, that particular look is just bad taste).


  Fifteen minutes on, I had an empty tray perched on my lap. Then ...

  Oh. Shit. Again.

  I’d eaten too much, and nature called! Still, going through the house was out of the question. What to do? More greyscale thinking was needed. Fat lot of good it did last time, but maybe that’s because I was bound by a limited range, when really, there must be at least fifty shades of grey. Think creatively, Ruthie.

  I needed to free the turtles; bust a grumpy; pop a squat; send a fax; hang a rat. Oh, wait. Saying the same thing in so many different ways is not really seeing the many shades of grey in a situation. And the pressure was building! I frantically looked around. Oh God, I so needed to take a dookie; lay some cable; drop the kids off at the pool ... Yes, yes! That’s it! The pool. Opposite it and peeking out from behind a lush hedge of murraya was a cabana! I backed my way towards it through the shrubbery and looked through its window ... Hello, God! Behold, a beautiful porcelain throne with a timber seat and lid.

  The remainder of the afternoon passed uneventfully, but what an afternoon it was! And now the crowd was starting to thin out (if that was even possible), I just wanted to go home. So, with Reuben in tow, I walked crab-like along the lounge room wall and towards the foyer. I said adios to the fat lady and her pussy in Fernando Botero’s oil painting, and stepped onto the portico, only to be greeted by Lenny and Meg. They’d been caught up in their daughter’s celebration, so this was the first we’d seen of them the whole afternoon. I introduced Reuben and zeroed in on Lenny’s left hand. Yep, a stumpy pinkie. Just as well Ralph hadn’t come. The four of us stood there chatting for about five minutes.