Today’s man is the guy who invented the leaf blower, which is surely the most emasculating device to confront men since … women were invented.
Oh, yes, they’re a different breed. Today’s sports heroes and world leaders will publicly shed a tear. When I was a child the most vulnerable thing our fathers ever revealed was a passion for a second serve of ice-cream. We didn’t even have the emotional interplay of hugging our dads before going to sleep. Instead we used to kind of nod at each other. To this day the closest I ever got as a child to understanding the inner machinations of my father was hearing his stomach rumble. And in seventeen years that only happened once, and even then I think we blamed the seismic shift of the world’s tectonic plates.
So, like many from my generation, our family was lacking somewhat in the area of a physically omnipresent adult male role model. You can therefore imagine that our education regarding the grown-up masculine of the species was restricted to either rumours or fairytale princes and kings – whom I think we all know are so brave, nurturing and astounding that they were probably based on women.
But then again what would I know? The only first-hand knowledge of men that I garnered during my most impressionable years was limited to what I could glean from my father’s behaviour. The sum total of this was that males watch football on Saturday afternoons after going to the hardware shop, they watch cricket on Sunday afternoons after mowing the lawn, they spend a long time on the toilet and they don’t like citrus fruit.
Since leaving my parental home I have learnt a little more of the male of the species from my son, Frog, and my first ex-husband, Toad. (I refer to him as my first ex-husband despite the fact that I don’t have any other ex-husbands at this precise moment, but I’m not sure when this book will be read so I think it’s best to remain optimistic.)
Anyway from my ex-husband I learnt that when you ask a man what he’s thinking and he says, ‘Nothing,’ he is not having such private thoughts that he must keep them secret and he is not having such a brilliant think that he fears you may not comprehend his musings, he is in fact simply telling the truth and really and truly thinking of NOTHING!!!
And no sooner had I realised this than I began to understand that if a man says he has ‘half a mind’ to do something, then he means precisely that – that he has half a mind.
And from my son and his mates I have learnt that in order to otherwise function in any capacity as a human being, males need to spend long periods of time slumped like a melting ice-cream on the couch … and they also need to burp a lot. Males also find inflicting minor pain on each other to be highly entertaining and often hilarious, and males cannot shut cupboards, pick things up off the floor or even change a toilet roll. Indeed, I remember once I came home from work and found that my son had replaced an empty toilet roll in the bathroom with a new roll of toilet paper and I feared that to have all of a sudden done something so far out of his behavioural norm he must have been on drugs!
In retrospect, with this limited understanding of the species, is it really any wonder that I can’t fill the ache and space in my heart with the love of a bloke? I remember I was so ill-prepared on the male front when I first saw an erection that I ran off and called the police.
In fact, as the days have passed during this ‘weekus horribilis’ I’ve wondered whether this space in my heart can ever be filled. Maybe just like Liza’s bucket, there’s a hole in my heart and no matter how much love or attention or distraction gets poured in, it all just leaks out through that hole … and into my vital organs … where it turns into an unpleasant and antisocial occasional emission of gas.
As Fabulous as a Cow Turd
Maybe I deserve this ache in my heart.
Maybe I’m single because I’m a jerk.
Maybe I can’t get a new job because I’m a loser and a bore.
I was recently asked to be one of a panel of speakers. As each speaker presented their speech a woman at the side of the stage translated the presentation into sign language for the deaf. About a minute after I began speaking the translator sat back down in the audience and didn’t rise again to continue translating until someone else stood up to speak after me. And you know what? I still don’t know why.
I’m thinking of becoming a gay man. They wear nice clothes, they have great bodies and they seem to laugh a lot.
I can’t believe that when I was thirty I was considered an adult. Nowadays people who are thirty are referred to as ‘kids’.
I spent fifteen years in educational institutions and all I really learnt is that you shouldn’t swim in the Amazon River if you’ve got an open wound, and that Douglas Bader had a wooden leg. Oh, I also learnt that ‘the early bird catches the worm’ … but noticeably absent was any discussion on just what happened to the early worm!
What I should have learnt at school is the knowledge that I’ve actually needed through life, little things, like never go to a hairdresser who sells hats.
At least I’m not as dumb as Jimmy. For one month he paid a masseuse $100 a week to come to his home and give him a one-hour massage. Then he started to sleep with her and her fee went up to $400 and she stopped giving him a massage. Three months later she was still coming over but she now considered that they were in a relationship so she didn’t sleep with him, he gave her the massage, she got paid $800 a week and when they split up she got half his house.
To make my life more exciting I sometimes type with my eyes closed and the laugh ay how fnny all of the workds look.
I asked my mum whether she knew the secret to a happy life and she said, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. You just get on with it. It’s not rocket surgery.’
The Search for New Friends
And so, with no job, no immediate love distractions, and a determination/necessity to reinvent myself, I had no choice but to continue my so-far unrequited search to find the panacea for the hole in my heart. Having talked to any of my friends whom I thought could have the solution, I then tried making new friends. A guy at the bus stop (a ‘new friend’) suggested I get a self-help book titled What You Want Wants You. I did my very best to find it but unfortunately the book was out of print and unavailable anywhere, so it would appear that what I wanted didn’t want me at all.
Another ‘new friend’, a homeless person named Neil whom I met as he sold his toenail clippings on a median strip in the industrial heart of the city, told me that I should do a kind of ‘power of positive thinking’ course.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Are they expensive?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that,’ he replied. ‘I won my ticket to the course in a scratch-it competition from a label on a bottle of methylated spirits.’
‘And did the course change your life?’
‘You bet. They gave me a red cap.’
‘And …?’
‘Well, I’d always wanted a cap. Oh, and they encouraged me to write my own self-help book.’
‘Wow, fantastic. Tell me more.’
‘Well, it’s inspired by that book I’m OK, You’re OK and it’s called I’m OK, But You’re Completely Fucked.’
A guy who washes windscreens at the traffic lights (another ‘new friend’) told me my problem was that I was ‘too kind and too giving’ and then he rubbed a grubby cloth across my windscreen and requested that I ‘kindly give’ him five bucks.
Yet another ‘new friend’, the one who drove into the rear of my car while I was arguing with the greedy windscreen-washing man, told me that I should read The Secret.
‘The essence of it,’ she said, ‘is that all you have to do is visualise your dreams and they will then come true.’
‘Well, I’ve been visualising a higher bum lately, but if anything it’s actually got lower.’
‘Hmm. Maybe you didn’t really want it to change height after all and actually wanted it to stay the way it is … you know, looking a bit like a huge cow turd.’
‘Maybe, maybe,’ I replied. ‘But if anyone can have what they want just by visualisin
g it, why are so many people in the world starving and poverty-stricken, abused and ill? You can’t tell me that’s because they actually don’t want to change.’
‘No. Of course they want their suffering to end, but they’re just not visualising hard enough.’
I looked at her in disbelief, then visualised her spontaneously combusting.
The Power of Positive Drinking
After four days of being ‘between jobs’, I decided to get proactive about finding work. I didn’t have a clue where to start so I resolved to see whether I could make someone ring and offer me a fantastic job by just staring at the phone.
So I stared at the phone.
And I waited for the phone to ring.
You don’t often do that nowadays, sit at home and wait for the phone to ring, because we’ve got answering machines and mobile phones, but when I was a kid, with one million siblings,* one phone and no answering machine, you were always either waiting for the phone to ring or waiting for someone else to get off the phone so you could wait for the phone to ring.
The phone didn’t ring so I decided to continue to wait and stare at it. Theoretically there are other things I could have done with my time while waiting for the call, but waiting for a call is a funny thing because although you’re not actually doing anything, it seems to render you incapable of doing anything else.
So I sat there and stared at it and after an hour the phone did ring! But it wasn’t a job offer and disappointingly was just a wealthy, successful, intelligent and handsome suitor.
We went on a date three years ago and he said that he’d call the following morning but never actually did. I’d spent days agonising over why he didn’t call but when he finally did, just a few days ago, I couldn’t have cared two hoots.
‘Hi, it’s me. Dennis,’ he said.
‘Oh, long time no hear.’
‘Yes, sorry about that. After I dropped you off, I was in a car accident and I’ve been in a coma for the last three years.’
‘Oh, really. How convenient.’
‘I’ve wanted to call you for the past three years but I couldn’t move my limbs.’
‘Couldn’t someone have dialled the number for you?’
‘Well, the problem was I couldn’t communicate to anyone that I wanted to make a call, and even if they had understood and dialled the phone, I wasn’t able to speak.’
‘Really … and now all of a sudden you can!’
‘You’re the first call I’ve made. I’ve got the medical reports if you want to see them. In fact, I’m actually still in the hospital. If you don’t believe me, and you’re willing to make the effort, you could come and pay me a visit.’
‘Don’t you think, after not ringing for three years, that it is actually you who should make the effort to see me?’
‘I can’t leave the hospital bed for another month.’
‘Well, why don’t you call me again then?’
‘Well, I was actually ringing to see if you wanted to work for me.’
‘I’ll be right over,’ I said.
I hopped in the car and drove past a bloke who was carrying an umbrella that had emblazoned on the rim, Jesus is coming … look busy.
When I arrived at the hospital I found Dennis in a private room. He was lying in bed attached to drips and machines. Bizarrely, he was trying to light a cigarette by holding it in his mouth and poking the end in the electrical circuit of his artificial lung.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I’ve only just started.’
‘Is it the stress and the worry of a near-death experience?’
‘No, it’s realising that death can strike at any minute and I don’t want to miss out on any of life’s pleasures.’
‘Mmm,’ I murmured as I took time to ponder. ‘Are you sure you don’t have any brain damage?’
‘No, nothing at all is permanently impaired, but my hands are still a bit stiff, and that’s what I want to talk to you about.’
‘Great,’ I said, imagining that he might want me to write his press releases, all-important business speeches or international business reports.
‘I would like you to do for me what I can’t do for myself and haven’t been able to do for a very long three years.’
‘No problem,’ I replied.
‘Thanks,’ he said as he clumsily pulled his bed sheet to one side to reveal a small erect penis. ‘Then could you please have a go at this?’
‘Have a go?’ Have a go! What the hell does that mean? Stroke it, eat it, squeeze it with a pair of tweezers! I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether to ignore him, hug him or wipe him down with a sponge. He looked sort of like a faded, deflated soccer ball that’s been forgotten in the garden, left to endure the elements, and now has a cocktail frankfurt stuck in its valve.
I am a kind person. I am very generous. I gave $4.95 to a man just for wiping a grubby cloth over my windscreen! I encourage buskers who clearly have no talent. I help old ladies to cross the road, even if they don’t want to cross the road at all …
I stared at his face. I stared at his penis. I thought about how much a penis looks like a slug. An orderly entered the room. I quickly replaced the sheet. Then I tried to make myself seem innocent by engaging the orderly in a lengthy, arduous discussion about who cleans and starches his uniforms and how they get the stains out.
And then I left.
Married to a Rock
I suddenly felt needy.
I comforted myself by realising that at least I’m not as desperate as that woman in America who married a piece of sedimentary rock.
But I needed something to make me feel better so I went home to hug my children, and as soon as Frog was embraced within my desperate arms he said, ‘Hey, Mum, your skin looks like a baby lizard.’
Then Tadpole added, ‘You know, from the side you look exactly like Prince Charles,’ and as she held my face in her little hands she said, ‘I love you, dickhead.’
About an hour later a man turned up to read the gas meter. I didn’t know where the meter was but he finally found it in the laundry. He was in the laundry for about half an hour, and it was the longest relationship I’ve had in years. He said that he’d be back next week to check the meter again and I almost asked if he thought that this meant we were dating.
When he left I noticed that all my bras were missing from the washing basket.
Carpe Diem
You reach a certain age and you realise that no matter how rebellious you may think you are, you have more than likely established a few of your own rules in life in order to simply function. I, for example, live by the motto carpe diem … a fish a day.
For my benefit, on the other hand, my father has devised his own motto: ‘If you stopped being so disrespectful of proverbs, then maybe you could fill this yearning aching hole in your heart.’ But in truth I suspect my father actually believes that the problem is much more serious than this and that I perhaps need the help of our church of origin. My father doesn’t ever verbalise this suspicion because, if he’s right, then the problem is his fault – the reason being, as I recall, because he’s the one who stopped us attending church in the first place when he ceased driving us to Sunday school in 1970 after the price of petrol went up an eighth of a cent per gallon.
I recall also, sadly, that as soon as we stopped attending Sunday school, God punished us children by immediately bestowing unto my father a great passion for sailing.
Unfortunately when this passion struck my father we didn’t actually have a boat nor know anyone who owned one. We also didn’t have enough money to buy a boat, so my father decided, just like Noah, that he would taketh it unto himself to maketh one. The next two years of my life are somewhat of a blur due to a combination of the numbing head-to-toe pain involved with spending endless hours sitting on pieces of wood to ensure they’d glued together properly … and doing this while in the enclosed confines of a glue-fume-filled garage.
On the first day of the th
ird year, however, I do recall that my father had completed the begetting of the boat, and in one of those ironic moments where a parent can celebrate something that their children are at the same time mourning, we all got into the vomit-green Valiant and drove to the nearest waterway. Here the most precious of the children were given a life jacket and the remainder of us were simply herded into the vessel two by two with a packed esky full of lunch – and a bucket to bail the boat out should worst come to worst, which I hoped it would.
Sadly, worst didn’t come to worst, it came to even worser, as we then spent every Saturday for the next year and a half with the entire family crammed into a two-man wooden dinghy with a big fluorescent yellow sail, floating about the city’s harbour praying that no one would see us, but instead being officially declared a city tourist attraction. (Thus confirming Jerry Seinfeld’s view that there is no such thing as fun for all the family.)
We never complained because we loved our parents dearly and we were too cold to speak, but while my siblings spent a lot of that time warming themselves by singing ‘Ten Green Bottles’, I spent a lot of that time hurling messages overboard inside green bottles. And the messages simply read Help.
Great Gifts I Have Not Known
The news that Dad was selling the boat came as the greatest gift I had ever received. (This perhaps wasn’t that difficult because prior to this, our family gift-giving ritual involved receiving canned foodstuff in your Santa sack for Christmas and family heirlooms for birthdays – i.e. old canned foodstuff that used to belong to our grandmas.) To this day I remember the absolute joy of hearing that we would at last be relieved of our boat burden. And to this day I also remember that this absolute joy was later coupled with the greatest disappointment of my life – the announcement that we were selling the boat to get a new one.
The Night my Bum Dropped Page 7