The Octopus and I

by Erin Hortle

  ‘She probably likes you and that was her way of hitting on you,’ Bonnie whispered as we hurried down the corridor to our next class, books clutched to our chests and ponytails swinging officiously behind us. I agreed nastily and felt bad straight away. But, just in case—and even though I couldn’t help but glance, very quickly, at Cassie’s chest whenever I felt it safe to do so—I never spoke to Cassie again.

  Standing there, flat and scarred under the fluorescent light, as the surgeon and nurses fussed around me, I relived the guilt and mortification of my childhood, the disappointment and yearning of my adolescence, and a thought took hold: imagine being able to wear a strappy sundress or top with a low-slung back without worrying if the ugly band of my bra would peek above the fabric, not having to worry if my bra-free breasts appeared wizened in dresses cut for bustier women. Imagine having Cassie-like breasts that would swing forward so round and perfect. I looked down at the sizers and saw in them the promise of a set of breasts that would hold their own in every garment, in every flimsy, lacy bra. And I found myself feeling grateful that I’d had a double mastectomy because Jem was right: it meant that, despite the strange folds of skin and the silver and purple scars, my chest was a clean slate; there was no original to get in the way of artistic licence.

  Who wouldn’t?, I asked myself then, and still do, even now. Given the chance to remake their body, who wouldn’t opt for the body they’d always wished for?

  So I instructed the surgeon: ‘A tad bigger’ again.

  No one raised an eyebrow. It was all perfectly cordial. But even at the time, I felt like I’d done something wrong. Like I was a cheat.

  I remember so clearly the end of the drive home that day I ran into Terry. I remember turning from the highway just before the bridge of the neck, to the road that traces the hook of Pirates Bay. I remember my heart sinking when I saw the way the north-easterly sea breeze had blown in, and with it, a band of low cloud that hugged the coast and flattened everything into greyscale. The sea, lit ultramarine by the sun that morning, was now shifting dull and cheerless.

  But I pulled into the car park anyway. I felt so rubbish I had to swim.

  I remember the rush of cold water on my skin.

  Jem and I had sex that night, only hours after the whole Terry thing. Or at least, we tried to. I was on top and he shadowed me with outstretched hands, his palms continually skimming my nipples, but only just, and he watched me, cat-like, through languidly narrowed eyelids. It distracted me, being watched like that. I felt on show; his gaze made a performer of me and a costume of my breasts.

  ‘Shoulda kicked the seedy old alco in the balls!’ he’d spat when I’d told him about Terry earlier.

  ‘I still feel all dirty, you know?’

  ‘It’s bullshit that people would act like that, after what you’ve been through,’ he’d said.

  But his attention in bed wasn’t what I needed and I felt like this was something he should’ve anticipated.

  ‘Why do you do that?’ I asked, pausing and looking down at him. He dragged his eyes from my breasts, which sat boulder-like, a wall between us, to my face.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Pay them so much attention.’

  ‘Why?’ he panicked. ‘Do they hurt?’

  I was almost flattered by his concern.

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s just, I don’t know. It just feels like you like them too much. I don’t remember you paying my old ones this much attention.’

  ‘Well, they say variety is the spice of life,’ he quipped, then his face dropped when he saw the way I was looking at him. ‘C’mon, Luce, it was a joke.’

  ‘I know it was a joke,’ I said calmly, sliding off him. ‘The problem is, this sort of thing: it’s always a joke with you. I’m just not in the mood for it today.’

  I grabbed my dressing-gown from the floor by the bed, wrapped it around my body and retreated to the window seat, then nudged at the crumpled heap of clothes on the ground with my toe.

  ‘I’m sorry, Luce. I was being flippant. But jeez.’ He propped himself up on his elbow and drew the sheet over his waist. ‘What do you want me to do? Ignore them? That’ll be kind of hard, they’re so … there.’

  ‘You mean it, though, don’t you? Variety is the spice of life? It’s like being with a whole other woman for you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Look, I wouldn’t say it’s like being with a whole other woman, but if I’m being honest with you, there is something exciting about them—about their newness.’

  Poor Jem. He should’ve known honesty isn’t what these sorts of situations call for.

  ‘Are you trying to say you were bored with my old breasts?’

  The sigh he huffed out sounded a little like the word fuck. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then said calmly and deliberately: ‘No. Not at all. You’re twisting my words. I loved your old breasts. You know that. But, well, it’s only natural, isn’t it?’ he reasoned. ‘I’m in this win–win situation where I’m still monogamous—I still have you, and all I want is you; you know that—but I get this, I don’t know, sexual variety? You can’t blame me for enjoying it.’

  ‘Oh, it’s natural, is it?’ I scoffed, jumping at the bait. ‘You mean natural for men, right? “Sexual variety.” And tell me, Jem, what’s natural for women?’

  You see, we’d had this conversation—or this disagreement—many times before. The first time we’d had it, a few months into the relationship, I was left thinking maybe Jem was that kind of dudebro and maybe he really wasn’t worth my time. But I stayed and, over the course of the years, I came to realise that, even though it’s such a tedious conversation to have, there was a reason we kept having it. In many ways we’re similar but in others we’re so different in our attitudes, beliefs and thought processes, and for whatever reason, this conversation was a way for us to bring those differences together, albeit in a strange, roundabout and at times incredibly frustrating way. Or at least, before the cancer it was.

  Before the cancer, I was meant to ask him something along the lines of: Are you saying men have this all-encompassing sex drive but women don’t? Then, before he had a chance to respond, ask him how many women he—Jem, the small-town abalone diver—had slept with, then scoff when he answered, or didn’t, depending on his mood. You see, I’d been to university in Melbourne, and I had a pretty good time; nothing ridiculous, but still, we both knew the statistics. He’d wave it aside, saying that the reason women did this was biological in a different way, that they were hardwired to bear children and so any such actions on their part were geared towards reproduction and thus had an eye to the future, whereas for men, it was all about the present: just get the sperm out. I’d say: Well that’s bullshit; you’re completely denying the power of the pleasure of female orgasm, or orgasms, should I say? (Which was really a nod to him, because my body is hardwired like that and Jem is very thorough.) Then, he’d spread his hands and declare: The purpose of the female orgasm—of female pleasure—is to convince females to go through with sex and hurry the sperm ‘up there’. And I’d say: And the purpose of the male orgasm or male pleasure is? Surely not to convince males to go through with sex and hurry the sperm ‘up there’ also? So how is it any different?

  And so it would go on, until we reached the inevitable resolution: First, let’s agree to disagree, and, anyhow, just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s right, does it? Jem would never touch another woman; he had chosen monogamy. ‘As have I!’ I’d interject, and he would acquiesce with a nod of his head. Then, the tenor of the conversation would shift when one of us said something along the lines of: The inclination to breed is one of the reasons the planet is fucked, and really, should we have children? Should we do the natural thing, or should we do the right thing by the planet? And with that, the argument and whatever had spawned it would be put behind us and our attention would turn instead to a shared future—to a hypothetical shared child or a shared decision generated by a shared environmental concern—and
like magic our lives would open up, entwined and complicit before us. There was a certain grounding solidarity to it all—it was foundational to who we were; who we were as a couple. I don’t know. Somehow, it made us a collective. But the thing is, after the cancer and everything it did to my body—the new breasts, the infertility—that resolution was no longer possible.

  ‘I know what you’re trying to do,’ Jem said quietly, eyes begging me to back down. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Please. Just come back to bed.’

  But I didn’t, I wouldn’t. He was really pissing me off. He started it, or half started it. He’d got his two cents in then wanted me to leave it there—or rather, wanted me to let him leave it there.

  No, I thought. He can finish what he began.

  God. I couldn’t stand up to Terry that arvo, but that evening I was as petty and pigheaded as anything with Jem. Funny, isn’t it, how there are certain things you can’t let slide when it’s your partner.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You know you want to. Say it: What’s natural for women, Jem?’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ He was all but begging. I feel a bit bad thinking back on it. He was more sad than angry.

  But the thing was, I wanted him to be angry. I wanted him to shout so that I could shout, so that I could rage and maybe cry. I was in a mood. Terry had put me in a mood, the weather had kept me in that mood, and Jem was keeping me there longer. Because it wasn’t fair that the conversation finish with him all smug with his ‘sexual variety’. Because I wanted to have my say, to have a say. Because I wanted my new body to be acknowledged as more than a body geared towards reproduction (no longer) or masculine pleasure or whatever. I wanted it to be acknowledged as, as a …

  That was the thing: I didn’t know what. I didn’t know what it was anymore. I still don’t.

  ‘Say it,’ I ground out.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Say it!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Say it!’

  ‘Jeez, Luce!’ he burst out. Finally. ‘Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s right. You know I think that. We probably wouldn’t have had kids anyway, just like how I’d never cheat on you so we’re both going against nature. And, and,’ he was scrambling, arms thrown wide, imploring me, ‘and anyway, not all sex has to be reproductive: gay people enjoy sex too.’

  ‘Fuck! You’re unbelievable,’ I spluttered, even though it was normally one of my arguments, of sorts. ‘Are you seriously likening cancer-induced infertility to homosexuality? What would your sister say?’

  ‘May would agree with me! You’ve heard her judge “breeders”. She reckons, and I know you agree, that the world would be better if there were more homosexuals because the population would be smaller. They’re better for the environment! It’s Malthusian, just like cancer.’

  My jaw dropped. I’d taught him that word. And for him to use it against me like that?

  In case you don’t know, a Malthusian Crisis is this theory a bloke called Thomas Malthus came up with back in the day, which posits that nature provides checks against human population growth so that the population doesn’t exceed natural resources. So a Malthusian Crisis, like, say, the plague, is nature’s way of keeping us in check. Except, with developments in technology and medicine we haven’t had one since before the industrial revolution, which is one of the reasons the planet’s fucked: human population has just increased exponentially. Some people reckon global warming might be it: not just a Malthusian Crisis, but the Malthusian Crisis. Our version of the meteorite or the ice age or whatever it was that killed the dinosaurs. Not that that was a Malthusian Crisis, but still.

  ‘Homosexuality’s Malthusian? My cancer’s Malthusian?’

  ‘Well, cancer, like homosexuality, develops naturally, doesn’t it?’

  And just like that it was over. The fight had gone out of me. I was ready to flee, to fly. He could see it and knew to let me go. He knew he’d overstepped the mark and he knew that I knew I made him.

  He sat there in broody silence while I shimmied into my jeans and untangled his scratchy woollen jumper from the muddle of clothes on the floor.

  A gesture, perhaps?

  Read into it what you will.

  The night outside was star-studded and still. The afternoon cloud must have ebbed on the back of the waning north-easterly. I picked my way down to the beach then followed the curve of the neck on the ocean side, ranging along the tideline, sidestepping the dark lumps that dotted the sand. As I drew closer, the soft moonlight revealed them to be tassels of kelp or dead mutton-birds half buried in the tideline. The thick sea air swelled slowly, brushing against my cheeks and filling my lungs.

  My anger had faded, mostly. My grief? Not so much.

  I guess the irony of the whole scenario was that larger breasts were actually a symptom of my sickness: essentially, as the tissue mutated, and the cells divided, my breasts had been growing. They’d never been particularly sedentary appendages anyway. When I discovered the lumps, my initial thought was that they were simply my monthly cycle: my breasts usually plumped up a week from my period. But I’d just had my period and these lumps were nothing like the ripe, tender swelling I normally experienced. They were hard and misshapen under my skin, like marbles in a woollen sock. And then the baby was thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak, and my breasts were sliced off and tossed away along with the cancerous growths. Once adorned with my sedentary, silicone replicas I was surprised by how much I missed living by that quiet, fleshy cycle. I was shocked, as well, by how much I came to miss my period.

  ‘Often, a genetic predisposition for breast cancer correlates with a genetic predisposition for ovarian cancer. So, if you have breast cancer while you’re young, the risk of developing ovarian cancer later in life is quite high,’ the doctor told me. ‘It’s not unheard of, though, that the two should develop pretty much alongside one another like this. I’m so sorry.’

  I’d known from that moment that my period wouldn’t come back. I’d even taken solace in it as a consolation prize: You can’t have children, but don’t worry! You won’t have to put up with a bloody crotch once a month anymore. But as the months unfolded, I was taken aback by how much I missed anticipating that bloom of blood in my undies and I found that I couldn’t disentangle the rhythm it afforded my life from all that it symbolised: not only that I wasn’t pregnant this month, thank god, but that I might have been, and still might become.

  The loss wasn’t as bad for me as it would be for others, because I’d never been entirely sure I actually wanted kids; but I still felt it.

  ‘I feel like I can’t do what’s natural, you know?’ I tried to explain to Jem. ‘Like I’ve somehow lost a chance to properly experience my body. I’m too young for this. It’s not fair. I feel like something’s been stolen from me.’

  Jem covered one of my hands with one of his. I remember so clearly the way his skin looked: dramatically weathered against mine, which was chemo-ravaged—nothing but baking paper, lightly traced over with a blue pen.

  ‘I know, Luce,’ he said gently. ‘But really, I don’t think I would’ve been comfortable having them anyway. We’re a plague.’ He meant humans. ‘And now you and I won’t be responsible for contributing to it.’

  I mean, he was only voicing what we’d reasoned to each other many times before and I could tell part of him was relieved the temptation to reproduce was gone. And while I knew he was right, that it was logical to take consolation in the bigger picture, I couldn’t help but think he’d missed the point. But was the point simply that I hated that the power to choose had been taken away from me? From us? I don’t know. It’s all so petty, and yet, not.

  Just like the argument with Jem.

  We’ve been together nearly seven years. I’d recently graduated from uni in Melbourne and had just moved to Tassie, picking up a job in marketing at the devil park, when we met.

  Initially, I’d hated living on the Tasman Peninsula. It was lonely, and I felt like I was living
in a creepy backwater, full of rednecks and hillbillies and overshadowed by Port Arthur and all that had happened there. But, when I met Jem—and it was no coincidence it happened when I met him—I began to see this jut of land for what it is.

  It sounds stupid to say, but it was like I could suddenly really see it. The clouds churning on the shoulders of hills. The way the shifting and crumpling slabs of ocean are forever being coloured by sunlight, cloud-shadow and rain: blue, purple, green, yellow, grey, black, white. And I heard it, too, you know. I heard the honey- and metal-voiced birds shrieking in cacophony, the bush brimming with their noise.

  I guess, in retrospect, Jem’s adoring gaze made me feel beautiful—that when he looked at me, my eyes widened, whitened and sparkled in the way they do when you’re smitten. And those sparkles became the lens through which I saw the world. Sometimes I wonder if all I was doing during that blissful honeymoon period was viewing the peninsula as a new caricature, a series of glittering surfaces that I mistook for some kind of innate character, just as my loneliness had coloured it drab.

  But no, the honeymoon period is definitely over and the place is still bursting with beauty—and it was literally sparkling that night I was wandering the beach after our fight: as dark peaks of swell collapsed into walls of white water on the outside bank laid shallow by the low tide, bioluminescence rippled across the waves like the reflections of stars thrown into animated disarray. I remember being surprised at how strong those glimmers of light were, given the fullness of the moon. The ocean’s changing. No one can deny it. And I wondered if this excess was another symptom. It’s the sort of thing Jem would know, or pretend to know. Regardless of its cause, it’s so beautiful; I could have watched it all night.