Inconceivable

by Ben Elton

  After that we didn’t talk any more and she started clearing the plates in a marked manner.

  Dear Penny,

  I got my fucking period today.

  I’m writing this with a hotwater bottle clamped to my tummy because of the cramps. Oh, how I love being a woman. I’ve known it was coming for days.

  ‘What’s that dull aching feeling, I wonder?’

  ‘Why, that’s a little warning that you’re going to be bent double in agony for a couple of days living off painkillers, and by the way it looks like you’re barren as well.’

  Drusilla says I have to learn to love my periods, that they’re part of the sacred cycle of the earth and the moon. Words failed me at that juncture, which was fortunate really because had I thought about it I would have told her to get on her sacred cycle and ride it off a sodding cliff.

  It really is so depressing, Penny. The grim, clockwork inevitability of my body failing to perform the functions for which it was designed. A few months ago I broke down on the M6, my car, that is, not me, although quite frankly I nearly did as well. It was awful, just sitting there waiting for the breakdown people to come. Completely useless, sitting in an apparently perfectly serviceable car but not able to get anything to work (it was a blocked fuel line, by the way). Millions of other cars kept whizzing by and they were all working but I was stuck, absolutely stuck, and there was nothing I could do about it. I cannot tell you how frustrating it was. Well, my whole life’s like that really. Month after month I’m stuck, my car won’t work and I have no idea how to make it go. All there is left for me to do is to try and seek help, to face that long trudge up the hard shoulder in search of a phone that probably won’t work in order to call an emergency service that will take for ever to respond and when they do won’t be able to find the problem or have the right tool to fix it. Meanwhile, the entire rest of the female sex are whizzing past in Renault people carriers with eight babyseats in the back. Am I dragging out this analogy too far? If so I don’t care.

  Look, I know I’m whining here, but if I can’t whine to my imaginary friend who can I whine to? My periods are absolutely horrible and the crowning nightmare of my apparent infertility is the idea that this abject misery, which I have endured twelve times a year since I was thirteen, might be for nothing. I mean, if it turns out my whole plumbing system is irrevocably buggered and that I might just as well have had a hysterectomy twenty years ago I shall just die.

  Dear Book,

  Failed again. Arse. Lucy says that Sheila says the bloke on Oprah said that I’m not supposed to use that word. ‘Failed’, that is, not ‘arse’. Apparently the ‘fail’ word implies a value judgement. If we say that we’ve failed then that means in some way it’s our fault, which of course it isn’t. Lucy has read eight and a half million books on the subject of infertility and while they don’t agree on many things they do all seem to feel that a positive outlook is essential.

  Well, bollocks to that. We’ve failed again. Lucy has got her period, Restricted Bonking Month was a complete washout. She’s in bed right now, with the light off, groaning. I’m sure the main reason she wants a kid is to have nine months off having periods.

  They seem to be so awful for her. She says I can never know how bad it feels, but to give me some idea she says it’s like being kicked in the balls over and over again for two days. Sounds terrible, although how she would know what being kicked in the balls is like I don’t know.

  I always feel at such a loss at these times. So impotent. Whoops, wrong word there, but you know what I mean…I mean I know what I mean…for heaven’s sake, I think I’m going mad.

  Nobody’s going to read this but me and yet I’m beginning to address this pointless exercise to a third person. I must get a grip.

  Anyway, as I was remarking, I feel so useless at period time. I watch Lucy groaning away and I really haven’t got the faintest idea what’s going on with her. All I know is that her gut swells up like a football, which is doubly sad because it makes her look pregnant. I think all small boys should be given lessons about menstruation when they are eleven. I mean, we were never told anything about it when I was at school. I’ll bet they still gloss over it, and as you get older you don’t like to ask. I mean obviously I know the basics, but the details you have to pick up off the tampon ads on the telly and it’s most confusing. They use all this code language and imagery like ‘protection’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘all-over freshness’ and there’s wings involved and the blood’s blue and frankly you just don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on at all.

  Dear Penny,

  Felt better today, physically, anyway. Mentally I’m still feeling low. The brutal truth is that it is now sixty-one periods since Sam and I started trying for a baby. That’s five years and one month. What’s more, when I come to think about it, prior to that we weren’t exactly being careful. In fact we had at least a year of relying on withdrawal. I wanted to get preg even then and I remember thinking that if one night he didn’t get it out in time I wouldn’t mind a bit. I know now that he might as well have left it in until Christmas, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

  Because, basically, I have to face facts. I am Sad. I’m Barren. My womb is a prune.

  There, I’ve said it. I don’t care, it’s how I feel. What’s the point of this book if I can’t be honest? Excuse me, Penny, got to get a tissue.

  I’ve been crying, Penny, sorry. I tried reminding myself about the homeless and the starving people in Africa, but it didn’t work. Anyway, I’m back now. Don’t worry, I’m not about to collapse or have a breakdown or anything, it’s just that sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed, that’s all.

  And, yes, I

  that a lot of women wait a lot longer than five years and a month (actually six years and one month in my case, if you count the careless year) and then all of a sudden they start spraying sprogs about the place like a fish spawning. I’ve heard all the stories. Couples who gave up hope only to have eight kids in a week!

  ‘I know someone who waited decades!’ people say.

  ‘My cousin had actually been

  dead for three years when she had her first. Dead of old age! She was a shrivelled, sundried-tomato-like, cadaverous old corpse and what’s more her husband had no testicles, having lost them in the Crimean War. Yet once they’d had one they couldn’t stop. Ended up with enough for a football and a netball team plus a crowd of supporters!!’

  I’ve heard them all.

  Mum says that she’s sure it’s all in the mind

  . Everybody says that. She says I concentrate too much on my career. Everybody says that too. Besides which, career? Ha! Ha ha HA! One thing I do not have is a career. I am not a theatrical agent, I am a theatrical agent’s assistant. Negotiating residual repeat fees for cable broadcasts of ancient episodes of Emmerdale Farm (when it was still called Emmerdale Farm) is not what I call a career.

  Melinda says I’ve got to relax

  . Everybody says that as well! In fact, that is the thing that everybody says most. They say, ‘Relax, the thing to do is put it out of your mind and then it will happen.’ It is simply not possible to bloody well relax with your body clock ticking away in your ear at five million decibels, and your eggs getting more dry and ancient by the day.

  Melinda and George brought Cuthbert round today, which was nice. No, really it was, I’m not so bloody sad that I can’t enjoy my friends and their babies. Sam still refers to Cuthbert as Scrotum, which is ridiculous because he’s beautiful. I held him for a while and just wanted to eat him. It’s pathetic, I hate myself, but all the time I was saying how lovely he was, all I could think was, ‘Wish I had one.’

  Dear Sam,

  Scrotum may have improved slightly, difficult to say. I mean he no longer makes me want to hide behind the sofa like he was a monster from Doctor Who, but then that may just be because I’m getting used to him. George has overcome his initial qualms, I’m pleased to say, and given the lad the benefit of the doubt. The prospec
ts of young Cuthbert ending up wrapped in a blanket outside a police station are receding. I mean it’s clear that he’s not going to be a male model, that’s for sure, but George thinks he could probably do something in the City or on the radio. Or a boxer, perhaps? We certainly wouldn’t have to worry about his looks getting ruined.

  I’m probably being unfair here. I suppose all babies look this way in the very early stages, but I have to be honest and admit that they do absolutely nothing for me. I try to get clucky but no go, I don’t even want to hold them. I’m an arm’s-length man, thank you very much. That funny pulsating bit on their heads completely freaks me out. The first time I saw that I confidently expected the Alien to burst forth from it with Sigourney Weaver close behind. Of course Lucy went potty over the lad and had to hold him and I knew that all she could think was that she wished she had one.

  I wish that she did too. I wish that we both did. I would love to be the father of Lucy’s child.

  Sometimes, on the rare occasions when I go for my run in the park, I find myself fantasizing about us being a family. I imagine Lucy back home with the two cutest little toddlers ever and me getting back and having my bath with them and then we all have tea together and then a story.

  I’ll stop writing now as I’m in danger of turning into a sad fuck.

  Dear Penny,

  Drusilla has suggested aromatherapy. She’s given me some rose and geranium oils, which was nice of her. She says these oils are oestrogenic. Sam is of course completely dismissive. He says if women want to bathe in scented oils then that’s fine by him but they should not bloody well pretend there’s any further significance to it than that. I hate the way he does that. As if there’s some rational and obvious way of doing things and everything else is just self-indulgent claptrap. I mean it probably is self-indulgent claptrap, of course, but he doesn’t have to be so negative all the time. I said to him, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, you cynical bastard!’ which I must say I thought rather a clever riposte.

  The thing about Sam is that he protects his feelings by pretending he doesn’t have any. I’m sure that’s why he suffers from writer’s block. I just don’t believe you can write anything worthwhile without putting a bit of yourself into it.

  Dear Self,

  The house reeks! Stinks! I do wish Lucy would not talk to Drusilla. I mean I know that Drusilla has considered Lucy her soulmate since Lucy got her the part of a plum in a yogurt advert, but the woman is nuttier than squirrel shit. The aromatherapy business has got out of hand. As I write these very words Lucy, a normally rational person, is boiling up the bark of a hawthorn hedge with the roots of a herbaceous bush in order to make a tincture for her bath. I try not to be dismissive, but Lucy knows how I feel and takes it as evidence of a shallow cynicism on my part. She feels that this is at the root of my inability to write, saying that I live my emotional life at a glib surface level and that I won’t write anything worthwhile until I get in touch with my inner feelings. The truth of the matter is, of course, that I don’t have any inner feelings and the reason I can’t write anything decent is that I am a talent-free zone with the brain of a Brussels sprout.

  Dear Penny,

  Sam is still moaning about my aromatherapy and herbal remedies (I’m currently boiling fennel and ginger, which I admit is a bit whiffy). He’s so cold and dismissive of anything remotely spiritual or sensual which is very frustrating for me because I really do feel the need for softness and spirituality in my life sometimes. I mean, what’s the point of sharing your life with someone if you can’t communicate with them about the things that matter to you? Sam, I’m afraid, thinks that feelings are an inconvenience and never really wants to talk about anything important. He’s only interested in his work and trivia like old popmusic. Sometimes I even wonder about whether he still fancies me.

  Sheila took on an important new client today. An actor called Carl Phipps. He came into the office. Very arrogant. Good looking, certainly, but what does that signify?

  Dear Self,

  Now she’s started using this little candle and dish arrangement in which she warms aromatic oils. The house stinks like a student party. I know I shall have a blocked nose in the morning. On top of which the whole business has made her all upset with me as well. This evening she wanted me to massage nutmeg oil into the crease of her bum (not, I hasten to add, out of any sudden erotic desire but because it’s what it said you should do on the bottle).

  Well, I put down my newspaper and did it, of course, but she could tell that I wasn’t overly enthused about the whole thing.

  She felt I was massaging her bum crease in a perfunctory manner and took this as further evidence of my lack of tactile warmth, similar to the shameful way in which I don’t like to cuddle while watching the telly. Lucy thinks I’m uptight and unloving, that massaging her bum crease is something I should relish, that I should be rejoicing in the sensual dialogue betwixt my fingers and her bum. I just think that I wanted to finish my paper.

  Look, Book, I’m not saying I don’t fancy her. Of course I fancy her, but we’ve been together for nearly ten years! I just can’t get as worked up about her bum as I used to. I know her bum, I’m familiar with it, we’ve been through a lot together. Caressing it can never again be the same journey of mystery and delight that it was on our first wild nights together. I can’t say this to Lucy, of course. She’d be horrified and think me a callous pig. Although I can tell you one thing: if I strolled up to her while she was watching EastEnders and said, ‘Stick your fingers up my arse now,’ I’d get pretty short shrift.

  But it’s always the way with women, isn’t it? One law for them, one law for us. She’s completely irrational. She says that I’d probably be more than happy to massage aromatic oils into Winona Ryder’s bum and the truth is that of course I bloody well would! I don’t say so, of course, but naturally she takes my silence as an admission of guilt (contrary to all civilized law, I might point out). So she says, ‘Well, go on, then, I’m not stopping you,’ so I say no, I’m not going to massage oil into Winona Ryder’s bum because I love her (Lucy, that is, not Winona) and whatever my unworthy male hormonal response to gorgeous film stars might be, I have chosen to be faithful to Lucy. Also, I have to admit that Winona might not be one hundred per cent keen on the idea and her wishes would of course have to be taken into account.

  The extraordinary thing is that Lucy thinks that an attached man finding other women attractive is virtually tantamount to his being unfaithful. Which is bullshit! Only being unfaithful is tantamount to being unfaithful! I have tried to explain that the fact that a man remains faithful despite finding other women attractive (which all men do unless they’re dead) is the proof of his love and devotion and should be recognized as such and appreciated, not condemned. To which Lucy says, ‘Well, if you’re that desperate, go ahead, then. I’m not stopping you,’ and I say, ‘I don’t want to! That’s the point! But the reason that I’m not unfaithful is not because I never find other women attractive, but because I love you!’ And she says, ‘Well, if you’re that desperate, go ahead, then. I’m not stopping you.’

  And so the long day wears on.

  Dear Penny Pal,

  I feel a bit sad. I know Sam loves me and I suppose he still fancies me, but he doesn’t bother to show it very much and he never says it. He says he does, of course. He claims that I have selective ears, that I never hear him when he says nice things but only when he doesn’t. I don’t think that’s true. I think he only really says nice things when I ask him to say them, but I can’t be sure. I think that perhaps his mother didn’t cuddle him enough as a child or something. Tonight I made him massage some oil into my lower back and although he did do it I could tell that it was a major inconvenience for him, which made the whole thing pointless. I mean, if aromatherapy is going to have any effect at all I imagine it will be a pretty subtle one, dealing as it does with one’s most delicate biorhythms. Sam’s reluctant vibes will have
buggered all that completely. Let’s face it, delicate biorhythms are not exactly going to stand a lot of chance against a great big lump of negativity that just wants to read its newspaper.

  He used to be much more tactile but now he doesn’t even bother with foreplay when we have sex. I mean it’s not as if he’s In Like Flynn or anything like that. He’s not rough or insensitive. In fact I think he’s quite a sensitive lover, but he just doesn’t try so much any more. He just cuddles up for a bit until he thinks I’m ready and then he’s off. I sort of try to talk about it but he gets irritable. You see, he thinks it’s inevitable that two people will become less sensuous and erotically aware of each other as the years go by, but I don’t. Sometimes I’d rather just stroke a bit and cuddle than have sex, but I don’t think Sam would see the point.

  Dear Book,

  I think Lucy is at the end of her tether. She’s been a bit quiet these last few days and I know it’s because she’s thinking about fertility. There’s been this documentary running on the Beeb about IVF couples and she seems to have learnt it off by heart.

  Personally I can’t watch it. I just cannot bring myself to be interested in the sad and desperate experiences of complete strangers. Lucy, on the other hand, tapes it. She tapes anything about fertility, even that arrogant pillock Kilroy who’s on in the mornings. She cuts articles out of the papers (incredible how many there are) and writes off to all sorts of organizations. It’s all a bit heartbreaking, although she’s very good about it, determined not to become emotionally dysfunctional, she’s quite clear on that one. But I must say I do find it slightly alarming how attractive she seems to find baby clothes. Mind you, this is something I’ve noticed in many women. They look at a pair of tiny socks and say, ‘Ahh, isn’t that just so-o-o sweet and just lovely.’