Screw You Dolores

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  Early on, after the measles, I vowed to myself that I would never sweat the small stuff again. Life was too short. It wasn’t a rehearsal. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, yada yada yada.

  This is all true, sort of.

  Life is short and not a rehearsal, agreed.

  But what doesn’t kill you can sometimes, to be honest, just not kill you.

  And as for sweating the small stuff — guess what? Turns out just about EVERYTHING is small stuff. You can’t avoid sweating it. And if you have vowed that you won’t, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of blocked pores and possibly some very dangerous BO.

  For a while there I was tearing my hair out over my inability to avoid sweating the small stuff, but then I realised the error of my ways and got over it. Until recently, when clearly it slipped my mind; and now, when I’ve remembered it again. I don’t have to love every minute of being in Paris! I can be disgusted by the number of birds eating the amounts of vomit if I want to. Screw you, Dolores!

  Nothing is perfect, after all; no body is perfect, not even Elle McPherson’s, and she’s famous for hers.

  I interviewed her once for the grumpy old b*st*rds at the Herald, and I was flabbergasted to discover that she has her sore spots.

  ‘What’s it like waking up in the morning and seeing Elle McPherson in the mirror?’ I asked, because I think waking up in the morning and seeing Elle McPherson in the mirror would be pretty amazing.

  But her response floored me. ‘My head is too small for my body,’ she said. Yes. That is what Elle McPherson thinks when she looks in the mirror: that her head is too small for her body. I guess it’s why she’s known as The Body not The Head, but still.

  Ladies and other ladies, if Elle McPherson looks at herself and only sees what is wrong, we are all wasting our time trying to be her because in fact we already are. Only perhaps a bit shorter, or fatter, or with smaller boobs or a bigger butt or flabby arms, but really — you can’t fight it. She’s never had head-enlarging surgery so far as I know, because that would be stupid, and anyway there are other ways around it. She always has big hair. And she told me that she makes sure she is never photographed straight-on, that her head is always at an angle to her body. In this way, no one else is ever given cause to think about her tiny wee noggin. Not, I am sure, that anyone would.

  I might be making this next bit up, but I think it was also Elle who told me how to be photographed, a tip I have passed on many a time with great success, and which also involves never being pictured front-on to the camera. Turn to one side and place the hand closest to the camera on your hip, then put the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth just behind your top teeth and smile. Trust me, this works. You’ll look a million dollars. You’ll also look exactly the same in every picture, but at that price, who cares?

  By the way, Elle McPherson is nearly 50 herself, so I wonder if she still thinks her head is too small, or if she looks in the mirror and goes, ‘Sh*t hot! I’m Elle f**king McPherson. How cool is that?’ (Elle would never say ‘awesome’ by the way, unless she was hot-air ballooning over the Serengeti with Princess Caroline of Monaco, in which case it would be allowed.)

  The point is that it’s human nature to overlook what is good about your situation and concentrate on what is not. It would be better if it didn’t happen, but if it happens to Elle, then why wouldn’t it happen to us?

  Of course human nature is a b*tch. In fact, sometimes it’s enough to make you not want to even be human. To want be a hat instead, say. No, not a hat. A fascinator. Yes! Now I come to think of it, when I die I want to come back as a fascinator: a cervical one like the one Princess Beatrice wore to Kate and Wills’s wedding, but bigger. And purple. Or orange. Or gold. Real gold! With rhinestones!

  Why thank you, Miss Surly French Wait-person, I will have another rosé and some more of those free crisps, s’il vous plaît.

  I’m suddenly feeling a lot chirpier.

  A hairclip, a country for old men and a question of hygiene. Oh and Hugh Jackman

  I am only going to tell you my Hugh Jackman story if you promise not to mention it to him should your paths ever cross. If you feel that’s not something with which you can agree, please skip to the next chapter. If not, proceed, with caution.

  Every now and then I find myself in close proximity to someone really famous, because the Ginger works in the film industry and sometimes the really famous people are in the films he’s working on.

  As a rule, he tends to not let me get anywhere near them. To begin with this used to drive me crazy, but after Josh Hartnett allegedly desecrated my life-sized Robbie Williams cardboard cutout (another story and not as good as the Hugh Jackman one), I pretty much gave up caring.

  Most movie stars are short, anyway, or have terrible haircuts, although I did meet Viggo Mortensen, who is short and had the other at the time but was still very nice. I also had dinner once with the captain of the Titanic. Sushi, I recall, which is probably not surprising in the circumstances.

  Anyway, a few years ago Hugh Jackman came to New Zealand to work on a film called Wolverine, which the Ginger did some art directing on. (Note to self: this is getting ridiculous — I must really ask the Ginger what art directing is.)

  The Ginger was not inclined to lead me to the gorgeous Hugh, but it transpired that he had not even met him himself, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. (Whatever art directing is, it does not necessarily involve actors.)

  I did manage to find out from another source, however, that Hugh Jackman really hates big feet. Famke Janssen, this source said, with whom Hugh worked on the X-Men series, has big feet.

  I have a friend who lived in the same apartment building as Famke in New York, and my friend said she was not very popular because she was fantastically rude. This was also backed up, I might add, by the source who revealed the enormity of her feet, but I already knew this for myself, because, when going to visit my friend in New York one day, the elevator doors opened and Famke was standing there holding an unhappy-looking little bulldog. She looked at me as if I was something the poor little critter had sicked up, said ‘Going down’ in a disgusted tone, and closed the door in my face. So, that is my Famke Janssen story which is also not as good as my Hugh Jackman one, although similar to my Alan Rickman one.

  You might not know Alan Rickman by name, but he’s Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies and is in one of the all-time best weepies (refer to page 130), Truly Madly Deeply. When my friend Kate saw this movie she had to take the next day off work, it upset her so much. Don’t watch it if you have been recently bereaved. Anyway, Alan Rickman was also in the first Die Hard movie and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, as well as Love Actually and a slew of others.

  I’m such a big fan of his that when I spotted him waiting for the elevator in Barney’s department store in New York, I knew I could not let the moment pass without saying something. After a fair amount of dithering, I shimmied over, tapped him on the shoulder and said in the squeakiest voice you have ever heard, ‘I love you in everything!’

  He has quite a long nose, and he looked down it, which was probably the only option, then said ‘Thank you’ in a somewhat withering fashion, for which I could hardly blame him.

  I even knew that he was starring in a revival of Private Lives on Broadway, so I really could have and should have been more specific, and if I bump into him again I will be.

  When I saw the singer Alicia Keyes on the street, for example, I said to her, ‘We just saw you in Oakland last Friday and you were fantastic.’

  She also said ‘Thank you’, but without the withering.

  So, back to Hugh Jackman. The film crew of which the Ginger was part was based in Dunedin at this stage of the Wolverine shoot, and on his day off the Ginger and I had gone to see No Country for Old Men for which Javier Bardem had won an Oscar despite having possibly the worst haircut in the history of modern film. (I had that exact haircut myself when I was 13, and it is just plain wrong, no matter how you lo
ok at it.)

  Hair was on my mind at the time, although not actually so much on my head as it should have been, owing to the Great Hair Loss Incident of 2008. Stick with me, it’s all relevant.

  So, the Ginger and I are sitting in the back row of the movies — not so we can canoodle (get a grip), but because that way there can only be annoying f**kwits playing with their phones and eating large bags of caramel popcorn in front of you, not behind you as well.

  The seats were comfortable, for a change, but as I leaned back to take in the gratuitous violence, which is rife in No Country for Old Men, my hairclip dug into my head. I took it out and let my poor-excuse-for-hair fall half-heartedly to my shoulders.

  Generally I enjoy films, but I did not take to No Country for Old Men. I couldn’t work out for the life of me what it was about, and so was really looking forward to the ending, because I thought it would all become clear.

  Anyway, the Ginger asked me what the time was as he does not wear a watch, and, while I was bending over fiddling in my bag looking for my phone, the film ended. Just like that! I had not a clue what I had been sitting there for, all that time. Nothing became clear at all. Plus I needed to pee.

  So I went downstairs to the toilets, and very nice they were, too, but as I was going about my business I realised with a start that I had left my hairclip in the cinema, and that I still had my poor-excuse-for-hair falling half-heartedly to my shoulders.

  Merde!

  I raced back up the stairs to the cinema, hoping the next session had not yet started, the Ginger trailing along behind. As I was bending over the back-row seat looking for the stupid hairclip, my *rse in the air, I heard the Ginger talking to someone behind me. I stood up and saw that the someone was Hugh Jackman.

  ‘I’m Mark Robins,’ said the Ginger (because that’s his name), ‘and I’m an art director on your film.

  ‘And this,’ he said, proudly indicating the front of the person whose *rse had so recently been stuck in the air, ‘is my wife.’

  The lovely Hugh Jackman held out his hand, and, as I extended mine to shake it, I had the most awful, horrible, terrible, ghastly, appalling, horrific thought. In all the fuss over not knowing the time, not understanding the beginning, the middle and particularly the end of the movie, and discovering my hairclip was missing while in the downstairs dunny, I had forgotten to wash my hands, one of which was currently now clasped in that of the Hollywood heart-throb.

  Merde!

  I’m ashamed to say I babbled. I stuttered. I fluther-ed. I was as uncool as a non-cucumber, partly because Hugh Jackman is very tall and handsome and charming and lovely, and partly because if he was about to die of the ebola virus it would be my fault.

  ‘I lost my hairclip’ is the only sensible thing I could think of to say, followed quickly by ‘and the Ginger asked the time so I don’t know why Old Men shouldn’t be in the Country.’

  Hugh gave me the sort of smile you give a toddler who’s eaten the contents of its nappy.

  ‘Oh, someone just handed in a hairclip downstairs,’ said his friend, which turned out to be true, so the story had a happy ending — because also Hugh Jackman did not die. So far as I know, he never even got sick. But you should always, always, always wash your hands after you’ve been to the bathroom, in case you run into him.

  Dear Sarah-Kate

  I love your book about Sugar Wallace, and William Morrow would be delighted to publish it in the US, but how would you feel about the title, The Wedding Bees?

  Looking forward to hearing what you think.

  Regards

  Rachel Kahan

  Dear Rachel

  I think The Wedding Bees is a great title, and in fact I called the book that myself earlier on.

  Thank you very much for wanting to publish my old-fashioned love story.

  You weren’t joking, were you?

  I love you.

  Regards

  Sarah-Kate

  Skip this if you don’t want to know the plus side of not having kids

  I have an older and a younger brother and two younger sisters. One of the sisters is younger by not much, and one is younger by a lot.

  If you see me out with the one who is a lot younger, remember she is my sister. We were together at a café recently when she overheard a couple arguing about whether or not I was her mother. ‘No, they’re sisters!’ the woman was asserting. I don’t know what happened to her male companion who was insisting otherwise, but his lifeless body was fished out of a nearby river later that day. Shame.

  It’s not even that I mind being seen as that much older. For the record, if I’d borne her myself I would have been 12 at the time of conception. Anyone who knew me when I was 12 will tell you it would have to have been a wizard that impregnated me, because I was still playing witches and fairies at that stage.

  I was 13 when Rachael was born, and while I love her to bits, as do all her brothers and sisters, she left me with a very unromantic idea about babies.

  I still love them — contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to have one of your own to do that — but goodness me, they don’t sleep much, they take up all your time, and they need you so much that it actually hurts.

  The more you love something, the more you worry about what can go wrong with it — even if it’s only a loaf of sourdough bread you’re baking. And although nothing ever went wrong with Rachael, I still remember to this day clutching her when she was having a screaming fit, probably when she was about six months old, and she went blue in the face from holding her breath.

  Something in my heart broke off and pierced my maternal instinct that day, deflating it forever. If anything had happened to Rachael I would have died myself, and I did not like that feeling nor want it to visit me again. Well, who would, if they knew there was such an experience? If they didn’t, that’s another story, and so it would be full steam ahead.

  Me, well, I’m sure it was not directly as a result of that, but I certainly went on to never feel the urge to be a mother. Luckily for me, I met a man who never felt the urge to be a father, but we discussed it a lot more than some couples who actually do have children.

  Of all the conversations two people should have, I’m thinking ‘Shall we bring another life into this world?’ should be at least near the top of the list, but then so should ‘How do you feel about blue cheese, because I can’t be with someone who doesn’t like blue cheese?’

  I tiptoe across this territory (children, not cheese) knowing that it is bejewelled with land mines, because of course there is a whole bunch of women out there who are desperate to be mothers but for various reasons can’t be, and I feel very deeply sorry for them. They did not get to exercise their choice and I did, which isn’t fair for them; but still, it worked out for me so that’s something, isn’t it?

  I am very happy with my decision, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise, because maybe there are other women out there who also don’t want children but are scared to say so, because they will be labelled selfish and unnatural. Actually, that’s not a maybe. I wrote a story about not having children for a newspaper about a decade ago and I had more feedback on that than anything else I have ever written, most of it from younger women thanking me for speaking up, which I didn’t really mean to do, but managed anyway.

  The truth is I have been accused of being selfish and a child-hater — not often, but enough — but here is what I say to my accusers: Screw you, Dolores. You made your bed and I am happy for you to lie in it, and I will even tuck you in — but I don’t have to get in there and snuggle up with you.

  I can do what I like, what is best for me, and if that means choosing not to have children and choosing to go to the movies on the spur of the moment and choosing to go to Fiji outside the school holidays when the fares are cheaper and choosing to go out for dinner because I can’t be bothered cooking, even if it is a school night, you should respect my choices the way I respect yours. I didn’t tell you what to do, so don’t you tell me. All t
hose bra-burning feminists didn’t let their boobs hang down to their knees back in the 1970s just so a different bunch of bullies could tell us what to do with our bodies.

  One of the most depressing things I ever heard, when I was writing that newspaper story, was a nurse from a fertility clinic telling me that couples basically wanted written proof that they had tried to have children but couldn’t, to avoid the judgment of others. I’m sorry, but that is loony f**king tunes.

  Of course it is heartbreaking not to be able to realise your dreams — we’ve all been there — and time will hopefully help heal those wounds wherever they are.

  But those who judge others on the fruitfulness or otherwise of their loins should take themselves off to their rooms right now and think seriously about what they have done.

  There’s room on the planet for everyone. Although, strictly speaking, fewer would be better.

  I had a very refreshing discussion on the subject of not having children with the author Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote the bestseller Eat Pray Love, and more recently the wonderful novel The Signature of All Things. Liz is what we would call ‘bold’ in our house. She was brought up by unconventional parents to be as creative and outspoken as she wants to be, and she does it in a most delightful way.

  ‘I never want to engage in mommy versus non-mommy,’ she told me, ‘because it’s a difficult enough time without judging, and everybody must, must, must follow their own path and desires. But I’ve said for years there are three kinds of women: those born to be mothers, those born to be aunties, and those who should not be allowed within five feet of a child.’

  She puts herself in the auntie bracket, as do I, and says as the years go by she gets happier and happier with her decision. ‘It’s like the opposite of the biological clock,’ she says. ‘And I even have an out, which is that I’m an artist and I have to give up having a family in order to be an artist. And people will accept that more than the truth — which is that I don’t want to do it.’