Desperate Husbands

by Richard Glover

  Last year things got so hot in our fanless rental, we spent a couple of afternoons at the local Bi-Lo supermarket—playing cards on the benches near the checkout. The airconditioning was wonderful, although there’s nothing like another price check in aisle three to make you forget you’re in possession of the joker.

  While at Bi-Lo, of course, we could stock up on the chemicals required to keep at bay Australia’s wonderful and diverse wildlife. The real estate agent may have advertised the house as ‘sleeps eight’, but that’s not including the permanent occupants: about 5000 sandflies; a dozen battalions of mosquitos; a heaving mass of cockroaches; and some insane kookaburras with psycho-killer eyes.

  With our chemical ammunition from Bi-Lo, each evening is like a scene from Survivor—the tribal council scene—as we try to eat our meal outside, surrounded by burning plumes of citronella, our legs wet and stinging with Aerogard, a stick at the ready to hold at bay the meat-hungry kookaburras.

  How does the owner cope? How does he stand it? My eyes again flick to The Cupboard. What’s he got in there? He must have something really good: a secret stash of the hard stuff—smoke bombs and mozzie zappers; litres of banned DDT; spray packs full of agent orange, sitting in rusted tins, saved up from the Vietnam War.

  I imagine him up here—luxuriating on his mozzie-free balcony, pasta bubbling away in its large pot, an episode of Seinfeld twinkling away on the DVD, as the door to The Cupboard swings idly open in the breeze created by the massed banks of fans.

  Anyone know how to pick a lock?

  The little read books

  The film industry is always attacked for doing the same thing over and over again; but not the book industry. Every year the booksellers’ catalogues contain ideas that are just so fresh and original. Why not take a look at this year’s bumper crop?

  Whoops! Some Poo Just Came out of My Bum by I.P. Nightly. Another scatological triumph from the international author. Why not buy the set, including the sequels Whoops! Some Poo Came Out of My Bum Again, and Whoops! Some Poo Came Out of My Dog’s Bum. Who but I.P. Nightly could reveal that children find poo and wee jokes this funny? Guaranteed to give children a lifelong love of reading—but only of poo and wee jokes.

  How Come Everyone Else Isn’t as Spiritual as Me? by Michael Lunatic. Yet another volume in a lifelong series by the Melbourne poet and cartoonist, in which he points out that that ordinary people lead lives of mediocrity and desolation due to their strange unwillingness to be more like Michael Lunatic. Volume forty-three in the series.

  How I Took Off My Fancy Pants by Catherine d’Oats. Prose like this has been found for decades in dirty magazines such as Penthouse and Hustler. Yet Catherine d’Oats is a French intellectual, a female and a dead-set fancy-pants type writer. No wonder this work has sold 300,000 copies and been hailed as a breakthrough in our understanding of human desire. Maybe what’s special is knowing that Catherine has such a large vocabulary yet chooses to use only those words that have four letters. (Claims that Catherine d’Oats is the nom de plume of a bloke called Barry who runs a London chain of dirty cinemas are currently the subject of legal action.)

  Grind! by Professor Joseph Brezenski. Last year it was the history of the screwdriver; before that the history of the clock, the zipper and the salted cod. Now Harvard historian Joseph Brezenski has spent ten years charting the history of the pepper grinder. As he puts it: ‘Through studying this one artefact, the whole history of human civilisation can be told—from the first journeys into the new world, through to the development of the very large pepper grinder in today’s Italian restaurants.’ Certainly the professor’s thrilling narrative of innovation and revolution, set against the conservative world of the spice establishment, is well worth its 670 pages. The professor is currently working on a history of the sock, in two companion volumes, one on the history of the right sock, and one on the history of the left.

  Boo Hoo. It Wasn’t My Fault. An Anthology of Australian Political Memoirs. Collected in one volume, here are the political memoirs of a whole generation of Australian politicians—divided up according to their excuse for why it all went belly-up. With an introduction by British TV star Ali G, chapters include: Is It Because I Black?; Is It Because I Woman?; and Is It Because I Just a Deadhead?

  The Buttered Toast Book by Jamie Olive. Who needs to buy a single cookbook when you can fill your house with specialist volumes—whole thumping tomes dedicated to oysters, eggs or artichokes? In this beautifully designed book, Jamie Olive tells you how to make toast—including advice on how to choose the freshest bread at the supermarket; how to spread the butter right to the edges; plus a sumptuous photo display of jams and marmalades. And here’s the good news: at $97.50 you’ll have no money left for anything other than toast. Jamie’s companion volume, The Water Book—How to Pour It, How to Taste It and How to Enjoy it with Friends, will be out in the autumn.

  Pulling Up Stumps by Wayne Warrens. Cricket books are not actually meant to be read; they are meant to be given—usually to an elderly uncle who’ll receive the gift by mumbling miserably: ‘I don’t know why she gave me a book. I’ve already got a book.’ This one has a durable cover and a cheap price, and so comes Highly Recommended.

  White Knuckles by Zadie Zee. Being a writer used to be one of the few artistic jobs in which you could achieve fame and fortune without being good-looking. Thank goodness that loophole has finally been closed. Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell and H.G. Wells—all of them just too ugly to make it in today’s British literary scene. Sure Zadie Zee’s prose is unremarkable and her stories poorly developed, but check out the author picture on the back! Alas, Hanif Kureishi and Margaret Atwood write better books, but compare the author shots. No wonder bookshops have now made it compulsory to purchase Zadie’s novel by the time-honoured method of not stocking anything else.

  Happy reading.

  Defeated

  ‘Our income is zero. The

  salary goes into the bank but

  it’s spoken for before it

  lands. It’s like throwing a

  dead dog into a tank of

  piranhas. Gone within

  minutes. Just a few scraps

  floating to the surface. Going

  to the Flexiteller is like

  being witness to a massacre.

  Can we move onto the next

  question, if you don’t mind?’

  Count me out

  It’s census night and Sally Smith-Frazzle is at home, ready to fill out the official form. But she finds it’s impossible to give yes/no answers to all these questions. Maybe she’ll just have to bail up the census collector and explain first-hand some of the complexities of life.

  ‘Well, what’s your name?’ asks the census collector.

  ‘It’s Frazzle. Well, actually it’s Smith-Frazzle. We hyphenated to suit the kids but when Becky started high school she got embarrassed, so we stick with Frazzle now, except for the older boy, who hates his father so much he refuses to use the name. I take the piss out of him and call him The Boy Formerly Known as Frazzle but he just gives me a hostile stare. As if it’s my fault that Trevor’s his father. I tell him: “Why blame me? Blame the overproof Bundy rum at the Willow Hotel in Fremantle.” But it’s hard to get through to teenagers, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘The next thing is income,’ says the census collector. ‘You need to write in your income.’

  ‘In what sense do you mean income? In the sense that money comes in and Trevor and I sit down and decide how to spend it? You’ve got to be joking. Put down zero. Our income is zero. The salary goes into the bank but it’s spoken for before it lands. It’s like throwing a dead dog into a tank of piranhas. Gone within minutes. Just a few scraps floating to the surface. Going to the Flexiteller is like being witness to a massacre. Can we move onto the next question, if you don’t mind?’

  ‘Your age?’

  ‘Based on date of birth? Or how we look in the mirror? And if it’s the mirror, are you talking morning or
night? Take a reading before breakfast and you’d be handing me a senior’s card. Here’s the problem: I was one of those people that went straight from pimples to wrinkles. I was aged thirty-five years, three months and seven days—and then the changeover hit. Squeezed my last pimple on Monday. By Wednesday I looked like a geriatric bloodhound. I just regret I didn’t have more fun on the Tuesday night. It was like Anne of the Thousand Days. I had a window of opportunity of about three hours. I could have worked my way through the front bar of the Manzil Room and then spent the next ten years resting up. But you don’t know these things at the time, do you?’

  ‘Gender?’

  ‘We certainly started out as man and woman. I remember that quite clearly. But it gets a bit harder to tell once you hit your forties. Trevor’s now drinking so much beer I swear he’s started to develop breasts. About a B-cup, I’d say. Quite perky, not too saggy. Put some tassels on them and you’d have quite a show. I half suspect he’s slowly turning into a woman. Catch him side-on and you’d say he was pregnant. About eight months, with the baby lying breach. Sometimes I look at him sitting on the couch, and I say to myself, “That man could go into first stage labour at any moment and here I am just lying around. I should be plotting the fastest route to the hospital.”

  ‘Not that he’s the only one experiencing a sex change. I seem to be slowly turning into a bloke. Every week Trevor loses more hair off his body and somehow it’s popping up on mine. It’s like some weird transference is going on. I’ve tried sleeping with a pillow between us but still it happens. Once you’re down past my hips, it’s like The Planet of the Apes. Actually, you look a bit that way yourself; maybe we could share some tips for keeping it at bay?’

  ‘What about this question? Number in household tonight? Do you think you can manage that?’

  ‘Depends what we are eating. The boy likes meat. Promise him meat and he’ll be here. Otherwise it’s YMCA—Yesterday’s Muck Cooked Again. Tonight? Trevor’s cooking tonight—chops, sausages and a bit of bacon. The boy calls it Turf and Turf. I’ve promised to make Bad-for-you-potatoes. It’s my signature dish. Spuds with about half a ton of dairy product. Without it, Trevor would be half the man he is today. I could give you like the recipe, if you’d like.’

  ‘Do you speak a language other than English at home?’

  ‘I’d have to say yes. The Boy Formerly Known as Frazzle doesn’t really speak at all. He just grunts. Who knows what language he’s trying to speak, but it’s certainly not English. Trevor and I used to talk our heads off but you run out of steam after a while. We still communicate through body language. You might like to write that down: the language of love. Even with the breasts, he’s still a very attractive man. Maybe even more attractive. Now, will that be all?’

  The teenage boys’ guide to water conservation

  Life is so confusing. As a teenage boy I conserved water with the best of them. I never showered; cleaned my teeth only occasionally; didn’t need to shave; forgot to flush; and left all the dirty plates in the sink ‘for Later’. I also failed to water pot plants, even ones left in my direct care, with the result that they died, never to require a drop of water again.

  In retrospect: I was a water crusader; an environmental saint. If the fifteen-year-old me was around right now, the green movement would give me a medal. What others called ‘grubby’, ‘skanky’ and ‘downright stomach-turning’ was merely a zealous attitude to water conservation. With Australia now facing a water crisis, I look back over the conversations I’ve had with various flatmates over the years and find in them a veritable How-to Guide to Water Savings.

  Clothes don’t need to be washed; they merely need to be rested. Again, the young men of Australia have long had the right idea. For a start, you should never take off clothes and fold them or hang them up in the wardrobe. Instead, spread them in a thin layer all over your bedroom floor, as you might cover a back lawn with top soil. (Tip: to get an even spread, simply let the clothes drop wherever you happen to take them off.) Certainly, the bedroom will soon be enveloped in fumes, but these fumes represent the cleaning process in action. The odours prove that dirt is leaving the clothes and entering the air. You can figure out the science: the more fumes, the more cleaning action you have going on. At the end of a couple of weeks, pick up the T-shirt nearest to you, pop it on and think of the water you’ve saved.

  Place a brick in the toilet cistern. After a while you’ll realise this means you have to flush two, three or four times after every use so pitiful is the amount of water now in the cistern. Your water bills will be huge. At this point, remove the brick from the cistern and pop it inside the toilet bowl itself. The sight of a large red house-brick inside your toilet will put off most people, and suddenly your water bill will shrink.

  Don’t shower with a friend. Such showers can go for hours. Communal showering was one of the reasons the sixties revolution petered out; that along with self-destructive drug use, self-referential politics and nits. My advice: shower with an enemy. The more the two of you hate each other, the quicker will be your showers. An ex-wife or -husband will do fine; or try the idiot business partner who sent you both bankrupt.

  Consider purchasing a waterless toilet. Many people are choosing the new microwave toilets. One problem: once you’ve seen what a microwave does to popcorn you may want to keep your pants on in its presence.

  Don’t wash the plates. It is extremely wasteful to wash plates and pots as you go; far better to leave for Later—as young men tend to call their female flatmates. She’ll be able to do a whole week’s worth in one go. It’s a great feeling, incidentally, when you first sling the pots and plates into the sink, knowing you’re doing your bit for the environment.

  Ditto cleaning the toilet. Leave it for Later. Remember, it’s not called the Patriarchal Cistern for nothing. Another point: if the manufacturer expected them to be cleaned, would they bother fitting them with a lid?

  The shower recess does not need cleaning. Not by you, her or anyone else. The principle is simple enough: every time you have a shower, the shower has a shower. There’s hot water, there’s solvents, there’s occasionally singing; if that’s not ‘cleaning the shower recess’ I don’t know what is. For those who use yet more water to give the shower its own personal shower, I say shame on you: think of the damn dam.

  If something does, by accident, get washed, never use a steam iron to press it. Just place it between your mattress and bed-base and sleep on it for a few weeks.

  Ban wet T-shirt competitions. Not only are they sexist, they are also wasteful of water. In the spirit of water conservation, far better for the T-shirt to be simply removed.

  Stop criticising young guys. All our lives people have criticised us. Visiting girlfriends. The occasional tidy male. Mothers. Real estate agents. Council rat catchers. All of them would make plain their feelings. They would criticise and complain. Oh, that we knew then what we know now. ‘Steady on, maaaaate,’ we’d have said. ‘I’m just trying to save water.’

  It certainly is difficult being ahead of one’s time.

  Vision statement

  For six months, every breakfast has been a misery. ‘You need glasses,’ Jocasta says matter-of-factly, as she spoons down her cereal. ‘Go on admit it. It’s just vanity that’s stopping you. You just can’t admit you’re getting old.’

  ‘I don’t need glasses,’ I reply with measured dignity, as I resume my reading of the newspaper. ‘I just find the printer’s ink a little smelly at this time of day. That’s why I choose to hold the newspaper at arm’s length.’

  Jocasta was issued with her reading glasses six months ago. To be ahead of her partner in this matter has been driving her crazy. As soon as we sit down to read the paper it begins. ‘The way you’re holding that paper is ridiculous,’ she’ll announce, peering at me over the top of her new glasses. ‘Is there any way you could be holding it further away? I mean, give it six months and you’ll need a pair of binoculars just to get the gist of the TV guide. T
wo years on and you’ll need the Hubble Telescope.’

  I ignore these attacks but secretly realise something is amiss. The newspaper, I come to understand, is in the grip of drastic cost-cutting—with stealthy reductions in the type size just to save money. It is a scandal not limited to the newspaper industry; I spot the same practice among the major book publishers, and noticeably among the manufacturers of supermarket goods. On cans, pill packets and cereal boxes the information on the back is now impossible to read.

  In the face of this conspiracy I have no choice but to approach Jocasta’s optometrist and seek assistance. I arrive at the shopping mall with the name and address Jocasta has supplied. I’m surprised to discover that the optometrist is a disturbingly young man with no apparent need to wear spectacles himself.

  He takes me into his rooms. It’s quite a process. Once in the chair, the young man swings this huge metal contraption in front of my eyes. It has two tiny eyeholes surrounded by metal levels and multicoloured cogs: it’s like being fitted with a pair of Elton John’s sunglasses. He asks me to read off various charts.

  ‘It’s all part of the ageing process,’ he says, as he twiddles with Elton’s glasses. ‘As we age, the muscles in the eyes can weaken,’ he continues, using the word ‘we’ even though he clearly isn’t doing much ageing himself. ‘You’ll find that process may continue as ageing proceeds.’

  Frankly, I don’t care for his overuse of the term ‘ageing’. Nor his wrinkle-free, spectacle-free face which stares down at me. It’s like being served a bottle of overproof rum by a teetotaller barman. I wonder if I should write a complaint letter to his employer.

  I toy with asking him whether he can look up Jocasta’s eye-test results and whisper them to me. That way I could head home and tell Jocasta how far ahead of me she is in the race towards old age, infirmity and bed-wetting. I then remember her first appointment and how she’d come home in such high spirits, describing the optometrist as ‘very helpful, quite young and extremely good-looking’. Certainly the complaint letter will be a long one.