“Aghhhhh! Oh god, I was a monster. And you know what's really awful, I can’t remember half of the, ah, close encounters, I had back then. I mean, for all I know, I might’ve even...you, um, did we...? That is, you and I...?”
I put him out of his misery.
“No Gordon, you and I never had sex.”
“Oh thank god... no! I didn't mean it like that”, he said quickly, noting my expression. “Not that having sex with you would have been awful or anything, I just mean that...”
“Oh shut up!” I laughed. “I know what you mean, you idiot, don't worry about it. I don't blame you for sewing a few wild oats in your youth, admittedly probably enough oats to keep Scotland fed for a decade, but the point is that you found something you were good at and you stuck to it. It's that kind of dedication to the job that has made this country great.”
Gordon was laughing out loud when Walking Shoulders came over with our coffees.
“Here we are people! A decaf almond milk latte and a flat white.”
“Thanks for that Trev,” Gordon said. “How are things with you mate?”
“Aw, y'know, hanging in there Gordy, waiting for some big shot producer to look up from his double espresso and discover my considerably enormous talents,” replied Walking Shoulders
“What happened with that TV show about the cool twenty somethings in Perth that you were up for?”
“God, don't talk to me about that! I lost the part to some closet queen who goes round pretending to be straight, to the point where he gets his female flatmate to pose as his girlfriend for interviews. It kills me! I'd have been perfect. Ah well, thank god there’ll always be a demand for my coffee and muffins eh. If anything comes up on your show, keep me in mind would ya Gordon?”
“Of course I will, take care Trev, see you round.”
We watched Trev walk over to take an order at another table.
“We were at drama school together,” Gordon said when he was out of earshot. “He's a bloody good actor too, it's a damn shame he hasn’t had a break yet. I might have to see what I can do.”
“Can you do anything?” I queried.
“Well Darla, it's all about who you know and after ten years in soaps I know a few people. I mean, I can’t get him an interview with Baz Luhrmann or anything but I reckon it's time Love on the Wards joined the 21st century and experimented with a gay storyline. Hell, maybe it's time for our very own Dr Ramswell to explore new aspects of his sexuality!”
Suddenly Gordon's beautiful blue eyes were flashing and he leaned forward towards me, shining with excitement. God, could the man BE anymore charismatic?
“Oh my god Darla, I think I just had a fucking brilliant idea! Why the hell haven't I thought of that before? The ratings would go through the roof!”
“Are you sure they would Gordon?” I said, the voice of doom. “I don't know if middle Australia are as open-minded as the folk who hang out in trendy Darlinghurst cafes. I mean, why does that gay guy who got Trev's part go around pretending to be straight? There must be a reason. And why does Trev, who is openly gay, find it so hard to get work? I think there's some grass roots homophobia going on. I mean, even you could only think of casting Trev in a gay role, why didn't you think about putting him forward for a straight role? He's an actor for godssake, his sexuality isn't supposed to be an issue, look at Tom Hanks in Philadelphia or Russell Crowe in The Sum of Us.”
He looked at me silently for a moment and slumped back into his chair. I felt like I'd just taken a ball off a puppy.
“Shit. You're right.” He paused for a moment. “But I still think that the more gay characters that middle Australia gets exposed to, the more chance we have as a nation of accepting each other's differences, be they sexual, ethnic, religious or whatever and God knows this country could do with more of that in recent times.”
He sighed heavily and pushed his beautiful manly hand with perfectly square nails through his blonde fringe. Gorgeous, charming AND a social conscience. Lordy, Lordy, there was no hope for me now.
“You’re right Gordon, it would be great to see a wider section of the community represented on television, it’s very white bread right now. And even though there’s been a lot more ethnic comedy and programmes, they’re still seen as niche. You’d think the entire country was populated by good-looking, straight, white people between the ages of 18 and 34. No one else gets much of a look in.”
“Hmm, well, when I get my own TV channel, I’ll change all that!”
“Yeah, and when I own my own magazine publishing house, I’ll change it too!”
We giggled, relieved to have gotten off the all too serious topic of ‘everything that’s wrong with the world’.
“Hell, I'm sorry Darla,” he said, changing the subject, “we’ve been sitting here for 20 minutes and we haven't even talked about the story for your mag.”
“What? Oh! Yes, the magazine, of course. My job and everything. I'd forgotten all about it myself, yeah, I guess we should talk about that since you've probably got to be somewhere soon.”
1“Yeah, but I've got time for another coffee if you have?”
I nodded thinking to myself that I’d be happy to sit here and drink coffee with him till I was 80. Gordon raised his arm to get Trev's attention, motioning that we’d have another round of the same. Finishing with a smile and a thumbs up, he turned back to me.
“Right, now what is it that I have to do?”
“Well, we’re doing a story called a day in the life of Dr Ramswell. The idea is that I follow you around for a day and write about your incredibly exciting life, the celebs you rub shoulders with, the amazing parties you go to, the trendy bars you hang out in and all that, bla bla.”
Gordon's eyebrows flew back into his fringe.
“God, that's gonna be a short story then, my life consists of being in the studio all day, getting home about 8pm to eat the Thai takeaway I bought on the way, then watching some doco on the ABC before heading to bed with a cup of...”
“Don't tell me, cocoa.”
“Ah, no, liquorice root tea actually, it’s fantastic stuff.”
At that point, Trev brought our drinks over, giving me a moment to think about how to break it to Gordon that the whole story would be pretty much totally made up.
“Oh bloody hell Gordon, well, what about if I followed you around for a week, only to the exciting things, and we pretended it was all in a day? Magazines do that kind of thing all the time.”
“Really? Good God, next you're going to tell me that the letters to the editor are made up as well.”
“Only the interesting ones.”
“Well, who’d have thought!" he said with mock surprise. 'so, basically we’re going to completely invent a day in my life, is that right?”
“Yep, you're getting the idea now. Although it would really help if there was at least one bona fida celeb party that we could hook all the made up stuff onto, surely there's some fancy schmancy shindig you've been invited to coming up soon?”
“Well, I get invited to loads of things, I just hardly ever go because after your ten thousandth mini samosa, it all gets a bit tired.”
“Jesus Gordon, you're 34 not 104! Where's your joie de vive? What gets you excited?”
He looked at me with a sly smile and raised an eyebrow suggestively. Good God, was the Gardener flirting with me?
“Ok, look,” I said, quickly changing the subject. “Just go home and sift through the million and one invitations you've had in the last day or so and give me a call about which one we can go to, ok?” I passed him my business card, circling my mobile phone number.
"Wait a minute!" he said. "I've just remembered, there is a party coming up soon that should be a doozie, all the big names will be there. It's this Saturday at the MCA, will that do it?"
Will that do it? That was only the biggest party Sydney is likely to see before the next Millennium.
"Yeah, that’ll be perfect. Will you be able to get me in, plus the photograph
er and an, um, assistant?" I added, suddenly remembering Anita and how my life wouldn’t be worth living if I didn't take her with me.
"Hmm, should be fine, I'll go and make the call now and give you a ring later to let you know."
Then, glancing at his watch and throwing back his last mouthful of coffee, my dream man announced he had to get to rehearsal. Kissing me on the cheek, we exchanged thanks and goodbyes and I watched him swagger out the door, turning to give me one last wave he then blasted me with a final, fatal smile warhead. Ka boom!
Chapter 12: Enter the Psychobitch
From the street below she could hear Simon, the little boy from next door, calling out to their new Labrador puppy.
“Saffron! Saaaaaffroooon!” The five year old boy called out at the top of his voice.
“Here Puppy, c’mere Saffron, it's dinner time! Mum's got some yummy lamb for you.”
The young woman smiled to herself and pulled back the thick blue curtain to glance out the window at the little boy. Simon had just started school the week before and was standing on the pavement in front of his house in baggy little grey trousers and a white shirt which had grass stains down the back, and was half hanging out at the back. Loosely knotted around his small waist was his school jumper.
After watching him for a minute, the woman let the curtain fall back into place and returned to her place on the floor where she sat cross-legged, picking up her scissors and turning her attention back to what she was doing. By her side was a big pile of glossy magazines.
Humming to herself as she worked, the woman rocked slowly backwards and forwards, her long dark hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. Her forehead was creased with concentration as she carefully cut around a photo of a man that she'd taken from one of the magazines in a stack next to her.
There wasn't much else in the room besides the hundreds of photos, apart from a table at the end of the room, which had a little shrine on it. In the centre of it was a big photo of the man's face with six tea light candles and a stick of incense in front of it. The candles were lit and the incense was burning.
It was three in the afternoon on a hot summers day but the woman had the curtains pulled tight. She sat in the middle of the room working beneath the light of a study lamp, angled so that it shone brightly right down on her hands. The work she was doing was thrown onto the walls around her as shadows of monstrous, bizarre puppets.
The woman was concerned about having plenty of light in order to see properly while she was cutting. She didn't want to accidentally cut off his fingers but she did want to make sure she completely cut out all trace of the pretty redheaded girl he was holding hands with. It was a tricky manoeuvre but she was well practised at it, as a glance around the room would attest to. Every wall and even the ceiling were covered in photos of this man. She'd obviously been collecting photos of him for a long time as the images, which had been plastered over virtually every flat surface in the room, showed him with a variety of different haircuts, and wearing fashions that dated back a decade. In the oldest photos he looked to be aged in his early twenties, a stunningly handsome young man with a shy smile and a hint of alarm in his eyes. Somewhere in the intervening years, the nervous young man had disappeared and in his place was a confident, self-assured man. With no signs of any lingering shyness or alarm, he smiled straight into the camera lens, raising a hand in friendly greeting to the photographer.
When she'd finished cutting the picture out, the girl kissed the image of the man then carefully glued it to thick card, before spraying it with a protective varnish.
As she looked around for somewhere to put it up, a high-pitched scream from outside made her jump. It was followed immediately by more screaming and a child yelling hysterically for his mother.
Smiling, the woman glanced at the razor sharp knife sitting on the carpet by her side. Simon had obviously found Saffron, she thought.
Chapter 13: Rebirth of the Bean Bag
I glanced at the clock above Mandy's head. 4pm. If I was going to get home, meet Anita, get changed, trowel on enough make-up to sink a battleship, all in time to meet up with Gordon for 8pm, then I needed to get the hell outta the office pronto.
"Anyway," continued Mands. 'so, I had to tell Derek for the second time that it was over. Can you believe that he turned up outside my window last night with a bunch of roses and a packet of Arnott’s Mint Slices? I mean, does he really think a few flowers and biscuits from the 7/11 are going to make up for having caught him out a second time? After he’d sworn to me that he’d never go near that bloody queen again. How can I ever trust him after that? The sight of him lying naked on our sofa -- the very sofa that we bought at IKEA when we first moved in together -- with his dick in the mouth of that fat, bald queen from next door will be etched on my memory for ever. Never mind that I had to give a perfectly good sofa to the Salvos because there was no way I was gonna seat my arse on it ever again."
Mands paused for breath and absentmindedly stuck her hands down the front of her low cut, tight, white t-shirt to adjust the position of her breasts. As she did, Tim, one of the guys from the post room came in with the mail and, at the sight of Anita's hand down her top, fiddling with her boobs, fell over a fake plant and badly sprained his ankle.
Mands was oblivious to the chaos she'd unleashed and blissfully unaware of the fact that she'd just single-handedly (or single-breastedly) ruined the Parramatta Pandas’ chances of winning the final that weekend against the Newcastle Knights by injuring Tim, their star player. It had been the first time in 37 years that the Pandas had made it through to the final. Thousands of dollars had been placed in bets and, come Saturday, an army of men would be crying in their beer. All because of one momentary jiggle of Mand's boobs. If a butterfly in China can cause an earthquake in Brazil with one beat of its wings, I hated to think what kind of devastation a jiggle of Mandy’s boobs could wreak.
“In the meantime”, she continued as Tim hobbled away, “I've pulled a couple of old vinyl bean bags down from the attic and am using them till I get the chance to head to IKEA again, even though trying to stand up after sitting in one of them for a while is like trying to pull your arse out of a suction cap."
"Mands", Kat butted in. "Beanbags might be enjoying a temporary resurgence of cool. Why don't we just do a wee story on how they’re like, totally, the Next Big Thing and then they will be. All the other media will jump on a story like that in a nanosecond. That way you'll still be a style guru."
We all nodded thoughtfully. Kat may have been a pain in the arse but she was right. We media types loved quirky little stories like "the rebirth of bean bags". It was cute, it lent itself to some nice photos and it could bring in some great advertising from big furnishing and home wares stores. After the nod from us, I could already see the home and lifestyle sections of the newspapers doing a double page spread on how "funky" bean bags were again. And all because Derek was caught getting a blowjob on Mand's old sofa. Truth be known, most "amazing, innovative, new trends" had equally dubious starts in life.
I glanced at the clock again. 4.10pm. Must get a move on. I was eating into valuable hair and make-up time.
"Good idea Kat, lets do something on what's sexy in seating and give the humble bean bag another bite of the glory. Mands, if we do the shoot round at your place, you can claim the costs of renovating the bean bags on expenses, what do you think?"
" Cool! Great idea, I'll get onto it."
"Ok, now I've gotta fly to get ready for this posh do tonight. Mands, if Arabella asks where I am, can you remind her I'm doing the soap star story?"
'sure thing Doll, have a great time, see ya tomorrow."
Grabbing my bag, I ran out the door and out into the streets to where my car was parked. I was early enough to miss rush hour over the Harbour Bridge so reckoned I could be home in 25 mins which meant just under three and a half hours to make myself gorgeous. God, that was a big call.
When I came to a screaming halt outside number 51 after hurtling
my green Barina over the bridge like a bullet, Anita was just putting her key in the door.
"Hi Darl!’ she called. "You obviously had the same idea as me, get home early to transform into a demon party kitten."
"Yep and I bags first shower!" I cried racing past her and up the stairs and into the bathroom.
"Go for your life, I fancy a cup of tea before I get stuck in... hey, what are you wearing?" She yelled at me from the kitchen downstairs.
"I'm not sure, it's gotta be a sexy little dress and very uncomfortable shoes I guess,” I yelled back as I pulled my clothes off and kicked them into the corner of the bathroom. “Maybe my Lisa Ho with the gold stilettos? If I can still get the damn dress zipped up, I think I've put on a couple of kilos since last time I pulled it out."
To confirm my worst fears I stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror and grabbed at the fat rolls around my stomach, thighs and back. Instant depression crashed around my ears.
"God, you talk rubbish!" Anita yelled back. " You have not gained weight, stop being so bloody paranoid."
Yeah, yeah, she could talk. Little Miss Skin n" Bones who couldn't gain weight if she was force-fed deep-fried chocolate bars and ice cream for a month.
“I'm turning the shower on now Neets, I'll talk to when I get out.”
Shutting the bathroom door, I turned the shower taps on and waited till steam started to rise. From the corner of my eye, the bathroom scales glimmered cruelly, calling my name. I'd managed to resist getting on them for three days now, another two days and I'd have set an all time record. It was a big improvement on the 20 years where I’d weighed myself religiously twice a day without fail, first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
"Don't do it," I whispered to myself. "You’ll just end up suicidal and anti-social. Step away from the evil scales."
But I didn’t listen, instead I pulled them out from under the bathroom cabinet. They glinted in the overhead light, beckoning me.
The Year I Went Pear-shaped: A fat woman's tale of love and insanity Page 7
