by PJ Mayhem
‘Is everything OK with her, Fiona?’ His concerned thoughtfulness makes his already younger-than-his-years voice sound even younger and sweeter.
I’m definitely going to come back as a bug in my next life. ‘Oh yes, fine really. Thanks.’ I poke at my plate. ‘Would you like the rest of my oysters, Jack? I want to save myself for the main course.’ I’m super careful not to say dessert in case he thinks I mean him.
He takes them eagerly and then I wonder if it was such a good idea—I don’t want to send mixed messages by passing him a plate of aphrodisiacs. But too late now.
‘And what do we have for main?’ I ask, for something to say.
‘Pumpkin and ricotta ravioli with sage burnt butter sauce.’
‘Sounds delicious.’ It really does.
It’s good we’re not at a restaurant, I think, as dinner moves on. At least we’re spared the humiliation of being the awkward couple on a date. Though Jack seems oblivious, continuing to be stiflingly attentive and bounding along with his unfunny jokes while I have to explain every one of my quips.
I’m way too tired and it’s way too late for me to think about going to a party by the time dinner has finished. Jack takes it quite well but insists on walking me home.
‘Thanks so much, Jack,’ I say when we reach the main gate of the apartments. Ingenious Ms Middle-of-the-Road solution—Jack can feel at peace, having met his gentlemanly obligation of seeing me home, and I get to avoid fully disclosing my address.
Jack doesn’t say anything but purses his lips into a little goldfish pucker as I turn to walk away. I do try to kiss him—I’m fully intending to—but at the last moment I turn my head so his lips land on my cheek.
Inside, I slip into something more comfortable myself and flop on my bed. My face is tight from smiling but I realise I didn’t actually laugh all night. I’d phone Jane if it wasn’t so late. She’s going to snort herself senseless when I tell her about tonight, we both will. Not poking fun at Jack—I’d accrued enough bad karma for one night—just at the ridiculousness of the situation and how something so theoretically right can be so wrong.
The internet groans with the load of Saturday night streaming, and it’s slim pickings on TV. At first when the Love Me, Love My Doll opening credits come up I think of changing stations, not in the mood for twee little girls and their toys, but it’s not at all pink tutus and tiaras. Of course it’s not, this is SBS. The opening shot is of a guy sitting beside a row of silicone dolls on his settee (he’s English). ‘I much prefer living with and having relationships with these girls to people,’ he tells the camera.
After recent events I could relate. ‘Much easier that way.’
Then the guy switches his favourite doll’s tongue over to one designed specifically for the purposes of pashing. Wow, they really think of everything, how terribly convenient. I’m so enthralled that even though he has a bit of an Ugly Rabbit Person look, I can’t take my eyes off the TV.
A bolt of lightning hits me, Mr Sheening my tarnished aura, and I feel the immediate change in the way my chakras are whirring. A doll could be everything I need. If it’s worked for other people, why not me?
Pen and notepad always at the ready, I begin to make a list of Silicone Partner Pros:
No concern about unmet emotional needs with a partner with a substandard EIQ (emotional intelligence quotient), i.e. name forgetting.
Easy conversation when I’m in the mood to chat—admit virtually same as talking to myself but at least I would be looking at someone else’s head, or a silicone someone else’s head.
No need to bother pretending I’m interested in a conversation I’d rather not be having, just to act like I care—also admit I don’t actually do this with men (may be one of my issues with them?).
No jealous rumblings or insecurities about the likes of younger/blonder/leggier/bustier/flirtier/can ‘look men in the eye easily and talk whipper snippering’ women.
No risk to personal welfare or virtue at the hands of European Mafia members and suburban swingers.
No conversations or phone calls about needing milk or deciding what’s for dinner, or things like, ‘Jeffie from work wants to know if we’re free to have brunch with him and Jazzie at Café So New So Now on Sunday.’ (Jeffie and Jazzie were bound to be mad for that sort of thing. The thought of it left me unable to breathe.)
The convenience of interchangeable tongues wasn’t to be underestimated—and the adaptability was certain to extend to other appendages.
The list could go on but item seven creates a bit of a road block. I’m not sure I could muster any real physical desire for a silicone doll. Maybe if I secretly record Frankie (I hadn’t considered the doll being anyone else)—not his twanging, but one of his soft, sweet interactions or maybe singing. I’d also need to steal one of his T-shirts—tricky, given I only ever have access to them on his person. Maybe something else that has his pheromones on it. Still tricky … I’ll have to think on that.
Of course I’ll have to surreptitiously get a photo of him for them to model Silicone Frankie on. I’ll also have to do some research to find out who ‘them’ are.
Put together, all of that might give a doll the human quality I’d need for a sexual encounter.
I listen to another guy tell how it used to be all ‘sex, sex, sex’ until he found fulfilment with his dolls.
‘Well, that’s just greedy,’ I say to the next man featured. He’s busy applying lipstick to one doll after another, lining up his ‘five girls’, as he lovingly refers to them, for a group photo. One Silicone Frankie is all I’d need. But then I realise I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. A silicone backup wouldn’t go astray—I just can’t think of anyone else I’d want it modelled on right now.
I don’t think twice about going into Jack’s on Sunday—I know he won’t be there. The thing that surprises me is that on Monday I don’t really think much about going in either, or at least overthink it. I do feel a bit awkward but there’s no sick feeling in my stomach, no butterflies, which really just tells me that I was right, there really isn’t anything between us. I just hope Jack’s OK.
‘Hi, Fiona.’
His greeting sounds pretty much the same as usual, maybe a tiny bit flatter. Perhaps I’d got him wrong. He’s definitely not a Scorpio taking it so lightly, even a Sagittarian would be a bit fiery about it. He must be an Aquarian, they’re very detached. Jack appears fine through the whole interaction. He’s so fine that it makes me totally fine too and then we’re both so fine that we’re back to our usual banter as though Saturday night never happened.
24
Frankie and BIG are so immersed in their conversation that I’m seemingly invisible when I slip in straight off the bus from work. I hope all my pre-departure primping and preening has withstood the trip. In my Ms Middle-of-the-Road way I note they are having a serious conversation about the merchant fees for different credit cards—well, Frankie is delivering a nasally lecture and telling BIG what to do. Strangely, I find this loud, bossy side of Frankie quite appealing. It’s not normally my style but there’s something about the way he does it that makes it slightly endearing—not quite enough for me to list it as an official item on my mental list of Endearing Things About Frankie. Not for now anyway. I’ll keep it on standby though.
I scoot around the shop in record time and am soon placing four items on the counter. ‘Hello, Frankie,’ I say, looking towards the doorway, where he is still talking merchant fees with BIG.
‘Hello, Fiona.’
I stand at the counter, money gathering sweat in my hand. For a moment I consider not saying anything more, just looking down and waiting—he seems very pre-occupied with bossing BIG around.
Nothing is going to happen unless you make it happen. Jane’s in my head reminding me, not that she’d endorse this situation.
‘What time do you guys close?’ My voice comes out soft and fluttery, as though carried by a breeze.
‘It depends who’s working,’ says Frankie f
lirtatiously. I watch his hands move to his chest. ‘If it’s me, I’ll wait for you.’
There’s something about the way he holds his hands, the way he moves them. Whatever it is, it affects me deep inside, making me feel like I’m going to stop breathing.
Oh Great Govinda, look at those pecs. I can see them through his shirt. After my week of not looking in—I’d banned myself leading up to so-a-date-date to give Jack a chance—I feel like someone who’s just come off a diet and there is Frankie, a big bowl of acquired-taste eye candy. Best of all, he is entirely calorie free. You can’t ever be sure when opportunity will knock again, so I let my eyes linger. Pretending to be looking at his hands is the perfect excuse to appreciate the physicality of his pecs without appearing obvious (I’m on a spiritual path, not becoming a Buddhist nun). The black T-shirt he’s wearing has a white rabbit on it and stripes of red and green that stretch across those pecs. Behold, my relationship corner Feng Shui bunny candles! Now Foreigner’s ‘Hot Blooded’ has come on the radio.
Even though everything from my head down feels as though it has begun to melt, I’m not going to pass out. ‘Should I phone ahead so you know whether you need to bother?’ I say and Frankie laughs.
‘Doesn’t need my quips explained’ will definitely make my mental list of Endearing Things About Frankie.
‘Seven fifteen is safe, seven thirty is pushing it. I work Monday and Tuesday evenings,’ Frankie says, adding to my delight by catering to my penchant for detail.
‘Mondays are later?’ I say, thinking that I have seen them open until eight on a Monday. The fear of sounding like a stalker doesn’t enter my brain.
‘Yeah.’
In my drifty state, I know that we have had some sort of eye contact during this exchange. It must have been broken at some point, though, as he is now ringing up my items and putting them into my enviro bag.
Frankie hands me my bag and we look into each other’s eyes.
Someone get me a snorkel—I think I might be drowning!
‘Thanks.’ I float out with my items, putting my head down as I squeeze past BIG, who shuffles to his left to let me through. He’s been watching the entire time. I have a thought but I push it immediately out of my mind. Falling victim to Frankie and BIG is not a yoghurt-tethered-torture scenario I can afford to entertain.
It’s just one step, and one long glide home. I don’t feel my feet touch the ground.
‘Now you’ve asked Jack out, why don’t you consider asking Frankie out?’ Lionel’s suggestion nearly makes me flip out of the apricot recliner.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I would never do that.’ I’m far too surprised to clarify that, technically, I didn’t quite ask Jack out.
‘That just goes to show there’s more at risk with Frankie, but I already knew that. It’s obvious, the way you light up when you talk about him. That doesn’t ever happen with Jack.’ Lionel’s back on Team Frankie since being updated on recent events.
‘So why make me go through it?’
‘I wanted you to experience it for yourself so you’d learn to trust your own instincts.’
Lionel does get me thinking, though not about asking Frankie out—I might be making progress but I haven’t had a complete personality transplant. I could do something less extreme, like write him a note although even that would be the equivalent of a major organ transplant. What would I say in it anyway?
Besides—I don’t want to push my luck—the positive energies in my life are manifesting in another, crucial, way: the Universe had delivered me another potentially perfect job—admin manager at the College of Sinology Studies.
Back at work after my lunchtime session with Lionel I’m busy-bored. I even spark up at Rosemary Hatchment limping towards my desk, then notice she’s brandishing half a filing cabinet of papers.
‘Oh, look at you, you poor thing,’ she says on arrival. ‘Are you alright?’
‘I’m fine, thanks, Rosemary. Just a bit tired.’ I take the papers from her. Why she needs notes typed up when she’s taught the subject for a million years I’ve no idea.
‘So long as you’re sure.’ She’s already limping away.
The next morning I don’t so much wake, as am torpedoed from sleep. At 4.30 I sit bolt upright in a panic attack. Sure, I’d had a few lately but it was as though Rosemary and her concerned look had made me see things I’d been trying to ignore.
I calm myself slightly with some hypno-breathing and reach for my water bottle. My fingers land on something soft and sludgy. It takes a moment in the darkness to work out what it is. A slug! A sense of queasiness overcomes me. Even worse, I’m out of Rescue Remedy—for the panic attack, not the slug.
When I get to work—after two coffees, thanks to Jack and Bing—Broomstick has amped up her bitchiness to Super Bitch status. Definitely time for a new job and the College of Sinology Studies really does seem perfect. I’m desperate to draw all the energy I need to create the perfect application for the Sinology studies job I have to submit by the deadline tonight so it’s a totally appropriate Ms Middle-of-the-Road manoeuvre to go into PGGG again on my way home. It’s not like I’m going to throw myself at Frankie or go grabbing a bunch of shallots and spank him with them. I just need some milk. I’m ignoring the fact that there are five other shops I can go to and that I went in yesterday.
Though there is one concern that I can’t quite get around, not necessarily restricted to just Frankie. On Saturday, when I bought some new foundation, the sales assistant gave me some free testers. Of course I took them eagerly. Who doesn’t love a free tester? They’re almost as good as a gift with purchase. Fossicking through my free tester booty I’d discovered not just an eye cream but an Intense Reinforcing Anti-Wrinkle Eye Cream. The hide of her! How very dare she infer that I need it! Sure, I have a teensy trace of a line or two but not nearly as many as other 35-year-olds and they’re hardly noticeable, certainly not in a triple-whammy Intense and Reinforcing and Anti-Wrinkle eye cream needing sort of way, or so I’d thought.
Now in PGGG, Frankie is looking at my face and I am spiralling off and two and two have become something like a hundred and twenty-four and I know without a doubt that he’s noticing all my cronish wrinkles that are apparently obvious to everyone but me. I had thought the way he focusses on my left side weird and hadn’t been able to figure it out but I now have an answer: obviously it is the most crinkly side of me and he’s been busy counting the Intense Reinforcing Anti-Wrinkle Eye Cream–needing lines of my left eye, to guess my age, like counting the rings of a tree trunk.
Although maybe there’s another explanation. Perhaps it’s the yang male energy of my left side that appeals to him. Maybe Frankie and Ms Terse-at-the-Till are nothing at all. He and BIG do seem very close, he spends an awful lot of time with him. Maybe he is gay and a feeder!
Thankfully before the image of Frankie and BIG in bed together—naked apart from BIG’s bib, Frankie feeding him chocolate-dipped strawberries laden with whipped cream—has a chance to fully form in my mind’s eye, I realise I’m being ridiculous. Even if I disregard all the stereotypes and the nice comfortable excuse for Frankie not making a move on me, if he were gay I’d have no trouble looking him in the eye and we’d be best friends by now. And, hello, a gay guy would not ever forget my name and even if he did, he’d cover it up so perfectly with a suitably endearing generic term I wouldn’t even realise he had.
No, I was pretty sure Frankie wasn’t gay. Which left me with only the confusing reality of Situation Frankie.
At the counter, Frankie’s eyes settle on my hands for a second. I already liberally apply hand cream to them—not anti-wrinkle, I admit—but I’m not overly paranoid about them. I watch his eyes move from my hand to my face. We look at each other. He has that look people get when they’re about to say something more meaningful than ‘Would you like me to bag that for you?’ or ‘Do you have forty cents?’ (That had been a disaster, expecting me to manage change—I’d almost died with the effort of trying to get
it out, my hands shaking as they were). I hold my breath. I can feel the words so close to the tip of his tongue that I want to reach across, squeeze his cheeks and force them out.
‘Frankie!’ bloody BIG calls, waddling up to the doorway.
Seriously! Motherfornicating Goddess hell, haven’t you got buns to eat or something, man?
‘Thank you, please come again,’ Frankie playfully reads the top of my receipt as he hands it to me but not before rolling his eyes and smiling because BIG has started talking even though Frankie doesn’t quite appear to be listening.
‘Thank you, Frankie,’ I say in that sing-song way that overtakes me around him these days. As I turn to walk away, I knock my elbow on the stack of baskets. This clumsiness is totally torturous, making a spectacle in front of him when all Ms Middle-of-the-Road wants to do is maintain a cool, calm and collected appearance. I’m not klutzy or clumsy anywhere else.
I can’t let it upset my energies though, I’ve got the application for the College of Sinology Studies to submit.
25
That is the way my life goes for several weeks, victim of super bitch Broomstick and frequent visits to PGGG without any real advancements with Frankie. But then I discover I’ve secured an interview.
When the day comes, I wake more excited than nervous.
The squelch of a dead gecko between my toes isn’t the best way to start the day for me or the gecko but particularly the gecko—it hadn’t been dead until I trod on it. I don’t let the incident dampen my positivity; it must have just been the gecko’s time.
Being able to walk to the College of Sinology Studies is just another plus to this apparently perfect role. I’m sure I’ll immediately become a nicer person not having to endure the nightmare of public transport every day. Although I definitely won’t do the walk in one and a half inch heels in future. My feet are screaming already and I’m only halfway. Not that I’m going to let scrunched toes come between me and my shiny new future, even if they are lethal weapons where geckos are concerned. I’m powered up with the Act My Life technique Amethyst emailed out in her monthly newsletter this week (such timing!). It’s all about acting confident over and over until I become it and it becomes me. So I’m sure meditating on the traits I want to embody, visualising myself having them, telling myself that today I’m going to be confident and professional and bracing myself for action will pay off. Lionel and I had also done some more work on my anxiety.