Odyssey In A Teacup

by Paula Houseman

  ‘Hello,’ I said in an affected tone.

  Ralph turned to look at me, lowered the paper and put his hand to his brow to shield his eyes from the glaring sun. ‘Hi there.’ He stared at me then gave me a crooked, closed-mouth, flirtatious smile. ‘I’m Brill, Ralph Brill.’

  As in, ‘Bond, James Bond’?

  When we were kids, Ralph and I loved playing at being our favourite movie, television or book characters. I was either Pollyanna or Mary Poppins, and he was Zorro. Ralph was so into him, he wore a Zorro mask (under his glasses) for two weeks straight, even sleeping and bathing with it on. Ralph reinforced his standing as my hero when he made the sign of the Z on Zelda’s back with Presto Whip, a non-dairy whip topping in a pressurised can, which Uncle Isaac somehow managed to bring back (in an insulated pack) from one of their trips to the States.

  When Ralph grew tired of being Zorro, he was either Tarzan or Noddy. So, Agent 007 was a departure for him.

  ‘And you would be ... ?’ He raised one eyebrow and slightly inclined his head.

  Mirroring him, I raised my eyebrow, tilted my head, smirked and was about to say ‘Pussy Galore’. But the way he was looking me up and down unabashedly and lasciviously suggested he was thinking along those lines anyway. What the ... ?

  Ralph was not playing!

  Sure, I looked very different, but ... yikes ... he was actually hitting on me (with a naff come-on, to boot)! Oddly, though, it felt, um, nice. No, no, no ... Eww! Ralph, it’s me. ME! I was tongue tied—couldn’t even squeak the words out. Just then, I saw Vette’s head pop up behind and above Ralph’s shoulder. She stared at me sleepily and squinted. Her breath caught sharply as recognition dawned.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she shrieked.

  It woke Maxi, who also stared, then sat bolt upright and screeched along with Vette like a pair of teenagers at a rock concert.

  ‘Holy shit! Fire engine red ... and ... a pageboy! And ... with a fuck-me fringe!’ Maxi fanned herself.

  The hair colour, she already knew about (she helped pick it). But at the last minute, Troy had suggested ‘we’ take an extra couple of inches off the length and go for a full, heavy fringe. The last time I had a fringe was when I was five. ‘Give it a shot,’ Troy had said. ‘You can always grow it out if you don’t like it.’

  Maxi and Vette said the hair was ‘bodacious’ and the dress ‘wicked’, but not a word from Ralph. He sat crimson-faced, open-mouthed and speechless as we stared at each other. I couldn’t resist raising my brow, tilting my head and smirking again but thought it best not to mention his initial come-hither move.

  ‘You don’t like it?

  ‘I, er. No. I ... ’ He was flummoxed.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘N-no. I mean, yes. Yes! I do like it. I thought you were just getting a few highlights. But that looks, er—you look amazing. Um ... you’re sure making statement now.’

  ‘That she is!’ Vette said jubilantly.

  As we three girls talked excitedly about my new hairstyle, Ralph got up, dived into the pool and did another dozen laps. He was no longer flustered when he emerged, but he didn’t say much during our last leisurely hour poolside.

  At seven o’clock, Maxi, Vette and I waited for Ralph at the entrance to the hotel restaurant. He came up behind us.

  ‘Close your legs, girls!’ he commanded with a flourish of false bravado.

  We turned to find him standing like a comical Spanish conquistador—minus the curly moustache—head defiantly tossed back, hands on hips, one jeaned leg outstretched. He was wearing royal blue patent leather alligator-print loafers. It looked like the statement-making supremo himself didn’t like to be outshone.

  ‘Those are no threat,’ Maxi said. ‘You’ll just end up seeing one big, cracked image.’

  ‘Hmm ... you mean ... as opposed to seeing many small images of crack?’

  ‘Whatever. Just one of your many special talents back then, hey.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN:

  LATEST CRAZED

  ‘Back then’ was about twenty-eight years earlier. During our teenage years, stretchy, pull-up ‘wet-look’ boots were all the rage for girls. Boys loved them too. Not so much because of the way they looked on a girl, but because of what they could look at on a girl: her knickers reflecting in the boot’s shiny surface. Pity Ralph was unreflective when it came to how to go about reaping the rewards of this fashion item.

  He’d strike up a conversation with a girl, then, with laser-like precision, he’d blatantly stare at her shoes. Not smooth; not cool. It put girls off. So Ralph reflected on this for a bit, and then bought himself a pair of black patent leather shoes (second hand, dirt-cheap). He also bought a jar of Vaseline. He smeared the petroleum jelly on the shoes and buffed them until their surface was mirror-like.

  Donning his new-old burnished shoes, Ralph would introduce himself to a girl, start up a conversation, move in closer, and strategically outstretch his foot until it rested in between her feet (that no one really stands with their feet together unless they’re in the military and in the atten-hut position worked in Ralph’s favour). He’d then ask a philosophical question, place his hand on his chin and look down, pretending to ponder her response. Ralph was already a chick magnet because of his good looks, but this broody quality (even though it was only quasi-thoughtfulness) was a characteristic of the Age of Aquarius, so it endeared him to the girls even more. At first. Eventually, he was tripped up by a dumb girl, who couldn’t understand why anyone would want to ruminate to such an extent on her simple answer.

  Him: ‘Ah ... Penelope. Lovely name. You know that you’re named after the wife of Odysseus?’

  Penelope: ‘Who? I’m named after my auntie.’

  Him: ‘Hmm ... ’ Foot extended; hand on chin; looking down; nodding pensively. Dumb.

  The dumb girls were not so dumb, though. They got wind of what he was doing and gossiped with the smart girls. All of them blackballed him (so he didn’t get to ball any of them). But instead of laying low for a bit, Ralph just kept shooting himself in his patent leather-shod foot. Dumber.

  One night, I observed him approaching one girl after another, and each girl slapped him in the face. It took me back to the Sunday afternoon family gathering when I got my first period at thirteen.

  I called Sylvia into the bathroom to tell her. She disappeared briefly, returned with a sanitary pad and slapped me in the face.

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong! What did I do wrong?’ I was bordering on hysteria.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Sylvia went on to explain that this was an old Jewish custom: when a girl first gets her period, slapping is supposedly designed to bring a rush of blood to the girl's face and stop her from bleeding too much down below. What a pile of shit!

  ‘I’ll buy you a few pairs of sanitary pants tomorrow,’ she added.

  Oh, joy. All the other girls had a sleek sanitary belt to keep their pads in place; I had to get big son of a bitch bloomers. Just like all my peers wore suspender belts to hold their stockings up, but I had to have a full on girdle with garter straps hanging off it. And it wasn’t an open bottom girdle like the women wear in a porno movie (apparently). No. It had a double crotch piece (probably because it acted like a chastity belt). Sylvia kept me stuck in the past as my contemporaries edged towards the future. Me vs. them = Queen Victoria vs. Victoria’s Secret.

  ‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ I had whispered loudly on that milestone afternoon, as she was halfway out the door.

  A few minutes later, though, when I left the bathroom, all the women were lined up to slap me. So much for bloody discretion.

  Ralph had come over and interrupted my reverie. One of the girls’ slaps must have been hard; he had a handprint on his cheek and was rubbing it.

  ‘What was all that about?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t do anything wrong! What did I do wrong?’

  Funny he should use the same lament as me when I got slapped some years earlier ... Ralph and I are just
so attuned.

  ‘What did you say to them?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t get anywhere as the sensitive guy, did I? So I was just honest and direct. I said, “Hi, I’m Ralph. Wanna bang”?’

  The story was interrupted when the waiter handed us our menus. After we ordered, Maxi shook her head and said, ‘Some of the piffle that came out of your mouth back then, Brill ... ’

  Only ‘back then’?

  ‘You might have been book smart but you were not street smart. Hey, the pill was freely available; lots of us were on it. All you had to do was ask nicely. And you didn’t need to go on a fishing expedition.’

  Vette and I exchanged amused glances.

  ‘What?’ Maxi asked. Then she smiled knowingly. ‘Ah yes. The old man and the sea.’

  We laughed; Ralph cringed at the memory of an incident that had caused him so much pain on so many levels ...

  When Albie, a keen angler, offered to take him fishing, Ralph saw it as a twofold opportunity (what wasn’t in his world?). He might finally establish a shred of a bond with his father, and maybe engage in some bondage with a beach babe.

  It was still early morning when they left for the beach, and it was pleasant weatherwise, but because a hot day was predicted, there were quite a few people down there already. Albie had slipped into rubber, chest high fishing waders with suspenders. He gave Ralph a pair, but with an aversion to wearing anything oversized, Ralph refused to put them on. Understandable. Decked out in his fisherman duds, Albie toted the tackle, and Ralph proudly displayed his in a little pair of tight-fitting, pale blue nylon Speedos.

  As Ralph strutted towards the water’s edge with his father, he turned a lot of heads, not least, those of a nearby group of girls. One in particular caught his eye. An attractive, slim, tanned brunette, she had a shag haircut and was wearing a floral bikini. His aim was to impress, and he managed to. Spectacularly.

  Under Albie’s supervision, Ralph threaded a live bloodworm onto a large hook. He then waded into the shallows with Albie and listened attentively to his instructions. But then Ralph, the show off, tried to outdo his father. He reached the rod back at too sharp an angle for an overhand cast and quickly brought it forward. The fishhook that should have ideally impaled a fish’s mouth never even made it into the water. Instead, it embedded itself in Ralph’s arse, only a couple of centimetres left of his o-ring. Ralph screamed, as did everyone who witnessed it.

  ‘Mein G-G-Gott, wertloses K-K-Kind!’ (‘My G-G-God, worthless ch-ch-child!’) Albie muttered as he carried a wounded, bleeding, humiliated Ralph to the car, laid him on the back seat and drove him to the casualty department of the nearest hospital.

  The sight of Ralph hobbling in with the hook and a squirming worm dangling from his patootie was disturbing to everyone in the waiting room, so he was ushered into an examination cubicle fairly quickly. The other outpatients were happy to see the back of him (but equally unhappy to see it).

  Because the hook was a large barbed one, the only way to remove it was to administer a local anaesthetic, cut off the eye of the hook and push it all the way through, rather than pull it out. Ralph ended up with six stitches. He shuffled out through the waiting room as the other patients stared; a couple of them baited him.

  ‘Looks like you really opened up a can of worms, mate.’

  ‘Worse case of worms I’ve ever seen!’

  Ralph shivered as he recalled the agony and indignity; we all flinched at the thought of it.

  ‘Who could blame you for never wanting to go fishing again?’ Vette said, as she spooned the remains of her crustacean bisque.

  ‘Oh, I still fished. Used my own ... rod.’ Ralph smiled. He pointed at Vette’s soup bowl. ‘Caught crabs, by the way. Only once, though.’

  Vette left the remains of her bisque.

  ‘You really need to wear them rubbers when you go fishing, Brill,’ Maxi admonished him.

  ‘I know and I have since then. The kind that fit snugly, even though they are large.’ Ralph grinned at Maxi; she rolled her eyes. He went quiet for a bit, and then turned and stared at me.

  ‘What?’ I felt a little uncomfortable under his intense gaze.

  ‘I, er, can’t believe how different you look.’

  I, er, can’t believe you tried to hit on me!

  ‘I can’t get over how changing your hair has completely changed your appearance.’

  ‘Really? When you had your Afro perm it completely changed your appearance.’

  ‘Yep, already was a dickhead. After that, he looked like one,’ Maxi said drily.

  This one was a bittersweet memory for Ralph ...

  A couple of months after Maxi had broken up with him, he decided to come to Swinger with us. He arranged to meet us there. At eight o’clock, I was standing in the queue outside the disco with Maxi and Vette, who were talking to the two guys in front of us, when someone tapped me on the shoulder and asked, ‘Are you a regular?’

  I turned around and came face to face with Joe Cool (as in one of the alter-egos of Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s dog). Like the original Joe Cool, this dude was leaning up against the wall next to us with his hand resting on it, one leg casually crossed over the other, head tilted up, and wearing John Lennon sunnies. But unlike the original Joe Cool, he had pants on—pale green, high-waisted, cuffed velvet bell-bottoms. He also wore a vivid, floral rayon body shirt with a long collar, and black patent platform shoes. And Joe Cool had an Afro.

  Shit. Why do I attract these idiots?

  As I tried to come up with a way to jettison him, he spoke again. ‘Ruthie, it’s me.’

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. ‘Ralph?’

  Apparently, Ralph wanted to try on a natty new image with his far out coiffure and duds, but I suspected the overall hip appearance was his way of showing Maxi what she was missing out on. Too bad his intentions went up in smoke. She turned to look at Ralph when she heard me say his name, stared for a few seconds, then pulled his hair.

  ‘Ouch! What was that for?’

  ‘Sorry, I thought it was a merkin.’

  ‘What’s a merkin?’ asked Vette, joining the conversation.

  ‘You know, a pubic wig. Only, he’s wearing one on his head.’

  We girls chortled; Ralph was wounded. But then he went into the disco with a Maxi-you’re-gonna-want-me-back attitude. He struck a Joe Cool pose against the bar, then against one of the pillars in the disco, and then near the stage where the band was playing (the sunnies stayed on the whole time). Ralph would eventually perfect this look in his modelling days, but for now, he just came across as a try-hard.

  Joe Cool was not as hot as he thought he was. The posse of girls he expected to attract never materialised. Still, as the night came to an end and everyone converged on the footpath outside the disco, Ralph was at it again—striking a pose, faux laughter as he pretended to engage in an animated conversation about nothing with the three of us. But it was obvious he was trying to get the attention of the pretty girl standing a few feet away from us. Petite with caramel blonde, shoulder length, softly layered hair, she was wearing chocolate-brown cord hot pants, cream suede cowboy boots, a fitted, cream quilted jacket, and a brown cloche hat. She was digging around for something in her bag. But then, as if she sensed Ralph’s eyes on her, she looked up.

  She focused directly on him and sniffed. Strange. This reaction was more aligned with canine social behaviour, but then ... she did have a Pomeranian look about her—the colouring, the visage. I wondered, can a Beagle (a Snoopy dog) have a future with a Pomeranian (was crossbreeding any worse than inbreeding)? Whatever—it was fascinating to watch them silently interact. She stared; he stared. What next? Butt sniffing, ball-licking, rolling over? None of these. She just screwed up her eyes; his lit up.

  And so had his pants.

  ‘FIRE!’ she screamed after looking down.

  Ralph’s left trouser cuff was slowly burning.

  Vette yelled, ‘Jesus Christ!’

  I swung into action, instinctively s
lamming him against a wall and stomping on the cuff.

  Shocked and dazed, Ralph slid to the ground.

  Maxi asked him if he was okay, then offered her special brand of comfort.

  ‘See, you managed to achieve a smouldering look without even trying.’

  Seemed someone had flicked a live cigarette butt and it had landed in his turn-up. He was lucky though—no burns to his ankle, only bruises from my footwork and Maxi’s words. But he was devastated that his pants were ruined. More than just his intentions had gone up in smoke. Or, so it seemed at first. Blondie came to his aid and fussed over him. They eventually took off together and Ralph mounted and humped her. A pity-fuck? Maybe. But he didn’t care. It was a little window of opportunity in his post-Maxi and pre-Mons period when he wasn’t getting any mons. And from this whole experience, he fashioned a new façade: pathos. With a hangdog look, Ralph didn’t have to do any work to score.

  CHAPTER TWENTY:

  FASHION FLOPS

  ‘I don’t get why you had to resort to the things you did in those disco days,’ said Vette. ‘You were already attracting the girls because of your good looks.’

  ‘I know, but—’

  ‘Oh God! Someone give me a bucket! BLEU-EU-EU-EUauaaauuuuuauuuuu ... ’

  ‘Fur ball?’ Ralph frowned at Maxi. ‘As I was about to say ... looks weren’t always enough to get me past first base. And just like your average guy, I had raging hormones back then. But as you know, I’m not your average guy. Girls might have flocked—’

  ‘BLEU-EU-EU-EUauaaauu—’

  ‘—but, the minute I tried to have an intelligent conversation with them, they took off—’

  ‘Like I said before, we didn’t want intelligent conversation,’ interjected Maxi. ‘We wanted sex!’

  ‘So did I!’

  ‘Well, there’s something in between intelligent conversation and “wanna bang?”’

  ‘And until I figured that one out; until I learned the art of smooth talk—’

  ‘BLEU-EU-EU-EUauaaauu—’