I say: ‘Well, we’re now following your opinion. So it’s your job to tell me where to go.’
Jocasta indicates she’d like to do exactly that.
In this sort of argument, it’s best to be the driver. Jocasta is directing me towards the Anzac Bridge, and so my aim is to prove this is the slowest, most foolish route imaginable.
My eyes scan the road ahead, searching out opportunities. Slow vehicles which, by clever driving, I can get stuck behind. Buses which might stop to let off passengers. Turning lanes in which I can get myself marooned. And traffic lights which, by the imperceptible slowing of our car, I can inspire to turn red.
Jocasta says: ‘You’re deliberately going slow.’
I deny it. ‘It’s just such a very difficult road.’
With a sense of triumph I spot a broken-down taxi in the kerbside lane, and allow myself a victorious glance towards Jocasta. I hope the glance will convey the message: ‘This sort of breakdown happens all the time on the Anzac Bridge, but never on Parramatta Road. Further proof that I am right once again.’
I realise this seems a lot of information to convey in a single glance, but you should have been there to see how I narrowed my eyes, glowered towards her, then sighed.
Yes! Sighed! (Although, a thought did bubble up: ‘How come we hope sighs will convey a message so obnoxious we’d never say it out loud?’)
Ahead the lights are red. This time I let loose an almost imperceptible snort. So imperceptible I may be able to deny its existence should Jocasta call me on it; but perceptible enough so she’ll be sure to hear it.
Perfect.
I’ve reached the stage in the argument where I’m in pretty deep. Either I find a way of escalating this thing, or I might be forced to admit I’m being a petulant pillock. I decide to escalate it.
‘It’s like your thing about King Street,’ I say. ‘You drive all over Sydney just to avoid it. What’s your problem?’
Jocasta tells me not to even talk to her about King Street, and says that my use of King Street to go west, when if you look at a map it actually goes south, is further proof of my galloping insanity. She then starts using the windscreen to draw various maps of Sydney, pointing out where we live (‘Here,’ she says, stabbing the windscreen), and how all my preferred ways home (‘There, there and there’) lead in virtually the opposite direction.
Then she sighs.
It’s a long, bleak sigh, slipping from her lips with a mixture of exhaustion and self-pity. As best I can decode it, it contains within it the narrative of how, twenty years ago, an intelligent young woman with options in life made a series of decisions which led her, in middle-age, to be driving at 30 kilometres an hour over the Anzac Bridge with a moron.
I realise this seems a lot of information to convey in a single sigh, but you should have been there to hear its length and gurgling depth.
I permit myself a secretive smile. She’s now behaving as badly as me. I think that’s some sort of victory.
Despite all my efforts, we get home in record time. She says nothing. But she does smile.
I turn to her. ‘That smile,’ I say, decoding its message, ‘that’s an I-told-you-so smile, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ she says archly, ‘just happy to be home.’
We’re in the driveway. But still, I think, some way short of being home, in any full sense of the word. Next time, I need some better directions.
Rules of Engagement
Forget the Federal Government’s talk of free ‘marriage training’; we need a new marriage contract — one which confronts the real compromises of married life. Before you marry, simply take this list to your proposed bloke, and see how many clauses he’ll sign up for.
If he ticks less than twenty items — well, frankly, I wouldn’t bother.
I agree to flirt only with women of a similar body shape to that of my partner, and certainly never with anyone thinner.
I agree to marvel when my partner has a whole dinner-table full of people laughing at one of her stories, even though I may have heard it once or twice before.
I agree not to call our child any unusual or modish names.
I agree not to cough, sneeze, breathe or otherwise suggest my own existence, during the broadcast of the medical drama E.R.
I agree never to drive around on a sixteenth of a tank of petrol, as I know this causes my partner anxiety.
We will agree to disagree on the subject of my schoolmate Tony, but I will personally pay for any damage to fixtures and fittings consequent to his visits.
I agree never, under any circumstances, to use the word ‘hysterical’.
I agree to listen, without comment, to her favourite wailing singer-songwriters.
I agree not to give constant map directions when my partner is driving, acknowledging that, when I’m not present, she somehow manages to get around.
I agree not to correct her when she sings the wrong words of songs.
I agree never to mention the concept of pre-menstrual tension during or following arguments, whatever my suspicions of its role in the present hostilities.
I agree to refrain from constantly pulling her back from street corners in the belief she was about to step in front of a passing car, acknowledging that, when I’m not present, she manages to stay alive.
I agree, while being her partner in the card game Five Hundred, never to employ the phrase ‘What sort of idiot bids eight hearts without the right bower?’ even when it’s true.
I agree to sit in restaurants, and order dessert for myself, while she demurely refuses, in the full knowledge that when it arrives, she’ll polish off the lot.
I agree to eschew nicknames such as ‘darl’, ‘baby’ and ‘old girl’.
I agree never to make separate calculations of the cost of her STD phone calls.
I agree to the former on the understanding there will likewise be no adding-up of my annual credit-card spending at Theo’s Liquor Mart.
I agree to her use of the word ‘we’ when describing to her sister the back-breaking labour that I have just completed on my own, as in the sentence: ‘We rebuilt the whole of the back fence last Sunday.’
I agree to learn all her strange family expressions, and teach them to our children, so that these peculiar traditions may be carried on.
I agree to watch as she tries on five different black tops, all seemingly identical, before enthusiastically endorsing her conviction that ‘the second one is the best’.
I shall remain able, however, to sense subtle changes in the wind, and adopt a sudden preference for Black Top Number Four should she change her mind.
I agree, when we are old and grey, not to dye my hair before she does.
I agree not to recruit her friends to my side of things during any bitter interior-decorating feuds.
I agree to be sympathetic when she’s sick, and not secretly imply it must be her fault.
I agree, when I’ve talked about my own day at work for two and a half hours, I might occasionally remember to ask about hers.
I agree my mid-life crisis, when it comes, will not involve a sports car, sky-diving, or guitar lessons.
I agree to refrain from employing, at the end of arguments, any of the popular variants of ‘sorry’ — the barely audible sorry, the screamed sorry, or, worst of all, the conditional sorry (‘I’m sorry if you took it that way’).
I agree male housework extends further than ‘jobs involving a ladder’.
I agree to stand adoringly in the background when she’s in the limelight, and to enjoy it.
I agree never, even in the heat of argument, to employ the remark: ‘You’re growing more like your mother every day.’
I make the above agreement subject to her eschewing the observation: ‘Geez, you’re like your father.’
I agree to respond to each and every one of her haircuts, over the next sixty years, as if it’s a revelation, a triumph, and a sensation.
And, finally and crucially, I agree to find her go
rgeous and sexy even when she’s dressed in Ugh boots and trackie daks.
The Der-Title
Film and TV critics are always calling for more subtlety and complexity on film and television. Not me. I’m already having enough trouble understanding what’s going on. Plots in which people dress up as someone else. Plots involving a double-double-double cross. Whodunits filmed in such gloomy light that I’m still trying to work out who was murdered.
Jocasta is a patient woman. At the end of each scene, she pauses the video and explains what has happened. Usually I’ve got a question, something like: ‘Why did her husband murder her, anyway — they seemed to be getting on so well?’
At this point, Jocasta usually lets loose a groan. But she gives me an answer: ‘Well, that bloke with the black hair and the gun, he wasn’t her husband, he was just a robber. The husband is this guy here.’
Then she’ll start the video again and point out what appears to me to be an identical guy. Both are good-looking, tall, dark-haired. How am I meant to pick the difference?
What I need is a movie producer who’ll help out the audience a little — who’ll cast someone with black hair as the husband and a short blond bloke as the murderer. or better, put one in a kilt and the other in a beard.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m watching videos I never bother with the characters’ names. I just form a mental picture. I think: ‘Hey, there’s Kilt Guy. And — oh! — he’s getting out a gun. Oh no! He’s murdering Beard Man.’
Of course, I know the problem with this. Take it to its furthest extent and you end up with the Pokémon Movie, with each character dressed head to toe in his or her own distinctive colour.
Which is exactly what I’d like to see more often in mainstream films. Just imagine Being John Malkovich with John Cusack in the full purple body stocking, and Cameron Diaz in the all-over Pikachu-yellow. Even I might have been able to understand what was going on.
It’s even tougher when we go out to the movies, because Jocasta won’t stand for any talking. All questions have to be saved until the end, so I usually just sit there, letting the movie wash over me. Years ago we went to The French Lieutenant’s Woman which, you may remember, featured a 19th-century romance alongside a modern love story between the actors. This, naturally, was far too much for me. And for the middle-aged couple behind us.
Throughout the movie came the couple’s furtive whispering: ‘Why does he have a moustache? He didn’t have a moustache in the last scene. Why is she wearing a miniskirt? And what is that car doing there?’
And then with a dismissive snort: ‘They didn’t even have cars in those days.’
Finally Jocasta had enough, swivelled in her seat and gave it to them: ‘Look, there are two time scales here. One bit’s 1867, the other’s now, and we’re cutting from one to another. Geddit?’
Naturally I sympathised with her annoyance (while being quietly grateful for the tip-off about the plot).
The Australian Opera a few years ago introduced a form of sub-titles, flashed on a screen above the stage, for those baffled by the foreign words. They are called sur-titles. Which gave me the idea of introducing some der-titles. With der-titles, a simple message would flash on the cinema screen for all those of us who are experiencing trouble. Just like a friendly word of advice from a caring, more intelligent friend.
Imagine one of those confusing wedding scenes; the der-title would flash up at just the right moment: ‘She’s not marrying her brother, they just both happen to have black hair.’
Or during the climactic shoot-out: ‘The guy who just shot him, he’s the police officer you saw before.’
I’ve even started compiling some of the great der-titles of the modern cinema, to be flashed up at that crucial, confusing moment. Der-titles such as:
‘Yes, she’s actually a man!’ — The Crying Game.
‘The time scale is flipping backwards and forwards’ — Pulp Fiction.
‘The wife did it’ — Presumed Innocent.
‘Faye Dunaway is the girl’s sister as well as the girl’s mother’ — Chinatown.
‘He’s repeating the same day over and over’ — Groundhog Day.
‘He’s just dressing up as his mother, she’s already dead’ — Psycho.
‘Rosebud was his sled when he was a kid’ — Citizen Kane.
Meanwhile, back at home, Jocasta still sits, a look of resignation on her face, hitting the pause button and stoically explaining the finer points to The Space Cadet. ‘What you’ve got to understand,’ she says, ‘is that Clark Kent is Superman.’
And then a worried glance at me. ‘You shouldn’t feel too bad if you didn’t understand either,’ she says, searching for a phrase to put me at my ease. ‘It fooled Lois.’
Bring on the der-titles now and give one man back his dignity.
Being 7
There’s a magic about The Space Cadet’s shoelaces. However many times you tie them up, when you next look down they are loose. What is the force that drives them apart? Why do they yearn to be free? At the start of the soccer game, I tie the laces once, then thread them beneath the boot, and tie them again on top. Just to be sure, I throw in a few more grannys and a couple of bows.
It’s like Houdini in the underwater packing case. Short of a length of chain and a padlock, I can do no more.
The Space Cadet runs onto the field, kicks a single ball, and the ref blows his whistle. The game is halted. His white laces flip and flop across the ground like a pair of dying seagulls.
If being seven years old was a job, with job descriptions and performance targets, The Space Cadet would meet all criteria. He is extremely seven.
What are the warning signs that a seven-year-old is in your presence? Here are just some of them.
Band-Aids represent the pinnacle of medical science. They can cure anything, especially if applied with the right amount of drama, concern, and spotlit focus on the injured party. Best of all, they combine, in one neat package, both a medicinal device and a badge of courage — simultaneously keeping out germs while alerting the wider world to the enormous pain you’ve suffered. On the evidence of seven-year-olds, the medical world should already be trialing the Band-Aid for use in the battle against typhoid, Alzheimer’s and leprosy.
Shoes belonging to a seven-year-old are always impossible to find. Removed at a whim, they then burrow into hiding — beneath the couch, behind the washing machine, underneath the grandmother. Many are never found, presumably having made a break for freedom. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to come across three dozen pairs of them, all hiding-out in the roof cavity, dreaming of escape, having sly-grog parties, and building themselves a hang-glider.
Brushing teeth, according to a seven-year-old boy, involves waving a toothbrush towards your mouth, and inhaling the faint smell of spearmint. Similarly, washing hands involves throwing a wary glance towards the soap-dish before making a dash for the backyard. Just as having a wee involves walking into a bathroom, and spotting the existence of a toilet in the vague direction that you’re aiming. ‘The toilet and I were in the same room at the same time. What more do you expect?’
Just as the shoelaces seem to spring apart, so does the seven-year-old head repel all head-gear. A hat, placed firmly on the head as you leave the house, will have vanished by the time you’ve reached the car. Hence my campaign to reinstate the bonnet, complete with a hearty chin-strap. Psychological damage for a whole generation of seven-year-old boys? Sure. But at least it’s sun-safe.
The list of acceptable sandwich fillings declines every day by one ingredient. Until there’s nothing left but peanut butter.
Discussing and debating the rules of a game always takes longer than actually playing it. It’s like watching the middle management of a very inefficient firm. No-one ever actually does anything, but there’s much appearance of activity.
What’s with the whole stick thing? The Space Cadet collects them wherever he goes. He walks around with them stuffed in his pockets or sli
d into his belt. Some are imagined swords and guns, but many are just sticks. ‘You haven’t dropped my stick?’ he’ll ask, eyes awash with panic. And so we march back into the bush, stepping over three million sticks, in order to find The Stick.
The pain of an injury depends on the circumstances of its occurrence. The average seven-year-old, while showing off on the trampoline for his glamorous sixteen-year-old baby-sitter, can plunge headfirst into a metal post and come up smiling. ‘It was nothing’, he’ll say, brushing the trickle of blood away from his eyes, and staggering slightly. But try brushing his hair …
In his own bed he’ll sleep curled up in the corner, looking angelic. Allow him into yours, and he’ll sprawl on an exact diagonal, arms and legs thrown out in a frozen star-jump. How can somebody who’s just over a metre tall, and thin as a post, entirely fill a queen-size bed? These are the mysteries of being seven.
At birthday and Christmas times he will open the most obscure gift — a three-metre blow-up duck; a matchstick model of the National Gallery; a complete kit for the preparation of a Japanese banquet — and say, instantly and sincerely: ‘This is exactly what I needed.’
There are as many excuses for getting out of bed as there are minutes between Bedtime at 9.00 p.m. and Final Unconsciousness at 10.00 p.m. Need for water, ghosts, need for more water, noises outside, blanket too hot, need for third glass of water, blanket too cold, pillow too lumpy, and — yes — the need to go to the toilet five times, due to over-consumption of water.
With every day, a new enthusiasm, and never the same two days running. A paddle-pop-stick castle, a clay pot, a garden that’s his very own, a Lego-and-dead-grass tableau, and a cubby for a pet frog should he ever get one. If only some of the enthusiasms lasted two days, the house might not be so full of just-started castles, pots, gardens, tableaux and cubbies. But, by then, his laces will stay tied. And he won’t be seven.
In Bed with Jocasta Page 4