The Perfect 10

by Louise Kean

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The answer to that wasn’t on the back of the Fondler box. I’m stumped.

  I am woken in the middle of the night by a strange and unsettling feeling. Not having experienced a panic attack I can’t be certain that’s what it is, but it feels the way a panic attack should feel, I think. My heart is racing, my mind is whirring, and I feel cold and awake and taut.

  It is a week and a half since the incident, and as I lay on my own in the dark, the memory of running down that alley screams through my mind, and I close my eyes, and scrunch them up tight to try to make the image go away. I am not going to cry. Adrian has been trying to talk all weekend, and I’ve been dumping the calls. I am starting to realise that there is nothing that sparks a common interest in us both, that sizzles down the line and connects us. But I feel a little lonely, in this big old bed by myself, which is strange, given how many years I spent sleeping on my own. Now I feel smaller and the bed feels bigger, but maybe Adrian would be the wrong man to have next to me now. I don’t think I want any affection he might choose to lazily fling my way, and I wouldn’t be able to muster the enthusiasm to sling any back. I don’t think we care about each other at all. I am a holiday for him. He is a tour guide for me. Maybe he’ll go home soon, safe in the knowledge that it is ultimately more comfortable there, and I’ll be savvy to a few things I wasn’t. Maybe we are just doing each other a favour. I hope he agrees when I explain it. But I don’t think I want Christmas with him now, or trips to the Lake District, or any of those things I was so desperate for last week. I can hardly even bear to think of him, and it is because of my mistake. I dressed him up in a suit of ‘perfect for me’ when it has never fitted him, and never will. He doesn’t laugh at my jokes. He refuses to go anywhere near a kitchen, and makes comments like ‘Woah there!’ if I happen to mention either my mum or my dad, as if I might suddenly wolf-whistle and they’ll walk in from the room next door, where they’ve been hiding all along with a vicar and a marriage licence with our names on it.

  In my defence I will admit that it is very easy to pin the right dreams on the wrong man, if only because they look the way you thought your partner would. I may be ready for somebody to love me, and to love them in return, but I don’t feel that with Adrian. We aren’t even walking in the same direction.

  I roll over in bed, hook my leg around and over the duvet, and hug a pillow … and think of Cagney. I hate myself for even picturing him anywhere near me. I hate the little part of me that prays he might picture me sometimes as well. I hate that we don’t seem able to have a conversation that doesn’t dissolve into a war. I hate that the image that bursts open in my head and spills out like a dream right now is of this bed, and him in it, with a long strong arm around me, and my head resting on the salt-and-pepper hairs on his chest. I hate that I think he could protect me if I was in trouble. In fact he already has. But what I really hate is that now I have got what I thought I wanted, namely Adrian, I realise that I don’t want him at all. What I seem to want, now that I have opened myself up to a little more choice, is hard to admit, even to myself. I am scared to acknowledge that, after all that has happened, all that I’ve dreamt of and wished for, my heart and my head seem to be screaming in unison, that I want an angry loner with grey hair and a drink problem. But I don’t think he is ever going to want me, so despite all my efforts I am back to square one. I kick off the duvet, angry with Cagney, but angrier with myself.

  My cold feet wake me up four hours later, as they poke out of the end of my duvet, neglected. I’ve overslept, which is unlike me these days. I stretch long and hard, pushing my hands up into the wall, pointing my toes out over the end of the bed. I should get up. I check the clock – it reads twenty minutes past eight, so I should definitely get out of bed. I am wide awake, but I lie on my back with my head nestled in a soft duck-down pillow, encased in a body heat bubble I have made for myself, languishing in the warmth of the duvet. I tentatively stick out my arm, and reach down to the side of my bed, grabbing around on the carpet, instead of rolling over and looking for what I know is there. My fingers locate the cardboard of the box, and I pull it up and hold it aloft in front of me. The Two-Fingered Fondler.

  This is it. It’s a watershed, an important moment, a turning point. This is about openly and honestly and soberly, in a daylight hour, admitting that I would like something sexual to happen with a man whose name I know and whose face I can picture. I have never fantasised sexually about anybody real, not even Adrian, scared of where it might lead, of how much more upset his rejection of me would be if I allowed myself to orgasm while picturing us having sex. It was too intimate. So I daydreamed conversations with Adrian, and kept my fantasies to lords of the manor, or lecturers, or prison guards, or any of the other fairy tales that have childishly entertained me for so long. And in all of those fantasies I was a serving wench, or a student, or a prisoner. I was never just me. I have never allowed myself to picture a potential reality, because I have always known that as soon as I do that fantasy will have a life of its own. It will float up and out of my head like a balloon filled with big wishes, spurred on by my own electricity, and it will hang above my head as if it were tied around my neck wherever I go. And if ever I see him, he will know, somehow, that it was the thought of him, coupled with my bestselling piece of merchandise, that made me sweat, that made my breathing erratic, that caused a catch in the back of my throat, that caused a creeping anticipatory feeling on the top insides of my thighs. That made me shift my legs apart and wish for the weight of a particular somebody on me. He’ll know I lost my Two-Fingered Fondler virginity to him somehow.

  I inspect the box. I turn it over three or four times before I even begin to make an effort to prise it open. The familiar fist with two strange saluting fingers drops out attached to the white plastic protective casing with little wire holders. I sit up. I flick the red switch at the bottom, and a whirring sound, like a very weak vacuum cleaner, starts. I turn it off straight away. It is too loud. People will hear … my neighbours might hear … Cagney James might hear …

  I throw it to the side and flick the radio on, as some barking spaniel of a DJ announces that the songs we have all been listening to are from last year. They don’t play music from the fifties on this station, or the sixties, or the seventies, or even the eighties. They figure it’s depressing, the kids don’t like it. If they stopped and listened hard enough they might realise that the kids don’t like anything any more, at least not with the same abandon reserved for old idols. There is just too much damn choice, everything can be improved upon, and they can probably do it better themselves with a PC and a loan from The Prince’s Trust.

  I flick off the radio and pick up the Fondler again. It isn’t such a big deal. I pull off the white plastic casing and chuck it on the floor, placing the Fondler itself on the duvet in my lap. I put a cushion over it, and flick the switch that turns it on. I can hear a muffled whirring, as I suffocate my Fondler in the name of shame. I picture somebody watching me, in a Big Brother scenario, my bedroom filled with cameras, and I am more embarrassed by the fact that I am trying to muffle a vibrator in an empty flat, than if I were using it.

  ‘For God’s sake, woman, just do it!’ I say aloud, remove the cushion, scoot down in the bed, and thrust the Fondler beneath the covers.

  Five seconds later my mother calls. She knew …

  ‘Are you hoovering?’ she asks, as I desperately try to locate the off switch. The switch I flicked as I answered the phone, the switch I thought would turn it off, in fact just made it faster and noisier.

  ‘Yes, I’m just turning it off.’

  ‘It sounds very weak, Sunny. I think the bag might need changing.’

  ‘It’s a Duster Buster,’ I say quickly. My ability to lie to my mother at speed and without guilt is impressive. I used to lie about the food that I ate all the time. I used to sneak out into the kitchen and butter a slice of bread and eat it secretly, trying noiselessly to open and close the fridge. After dinner
, when leftover spaghetti Bolognese or macaroni cheese sat proudly on the work top in casserole dishes covered in cling film, it was my secret trick to unpeel one side, dip in my hand, scoop up some food, eat it, make it appear that the food had not been touched by redistributing the top layer of pasta or sauce, and then reattach the cling film so nobody would ever know.

  At that point my mother would shout from her armchair in the living room, ‘What are you doing out there? Are you at that fridge?’

  ‘I’m just chucking something in the bin,’ or, ‘I’m getting a glass of water,’ were my standard responses. We both knew it was a lie, but neither one of us ever said anything.

  Occasionally my mother would sigh and look angry, and venture, ‘You don’t need that,’ as I picked up another roast potato after my plate was cleared. And I think, for whatever reason, it made me want it more. I did need it, I just didn’t know why. I still don’t, despite all the therapy. Why did I always need another potato? The irony being, of course, that the Sunday roasts that I once shovelled up in secret now make me throw my guts up, my stomach refusing to digest them. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pleased. I might still want to eat them, but I can’t, and if I do succumb, I just throw it all back up the next day, my stomach now unable to digest the gravy, we finally deduced, and I shiver in bed for twelve hours with dehydration and fatigue, and then bounce out of bed the following day a few pounds the lighter.

  I weighed myself as a child, and cried when I put on two pounds when I was supposed to be on a diet. I stole Maltesers from the sweet cupboard and cried after I had eaten them. I joined WeightWatchers, my mother took me and paid my three-pound joining fee, and I stepped on the scales terrified and mortified, awaiting the dreaded numbers. But in my first week I lost four pounds! Of course, by the end of the following week I had put five pounds back on. Then I would cry again and tell my mother that standing, aged twelve, in a room full of fifty-year-old women in a community hall with drab walls and a big set of judgement scales at the front, depressed me. It made me feel like my problem was going to be with me for life. It made me feel like a grown-up, and I still wanted to be a child, and do what I wanted, without responsibility.

  Of course, the worst thing was that my sister, Elaine, could eat the same things as me and was as skinny as a rake. She liked salt and vinegar crisps and I liked ready salted. I liked Twix and she liked Toblerone. She weighed six stone something, and I was nearer nine. She was three years older, and four inches taller. She was little and I was large, as was often remarked by careless family friends or relatives. I remember it all, every comment shot into my brain, embedded like a miniature arrow, finding a comfy spot to puncture, for the rest of my life. They won’t budge, the remarks and the taunts; I can’t lose them.

  I suppose the thing that shames me most is that I was the one defining myself by my fat, and I was the one keeping occasional suitors at bay, because I was the one who couldn’t believe that they found me attractive, mound of flesh that I was. And I have no doubt that it was this insecurity that a lot of men sensed, and that made me less attractive than if I had been truly happy and carefree about my size.

  I remember Ian, a friend of a friend that I somehow knew in the way that you somehow know everybody, at university in my final year. He was nice. He had dark hair, which he had cut for five pounds in a barber’s in town, and he was five foot ten. He wore slightly faded Nirvana and Police T-shirts with jeans that had ripped themselves through wear, and not been bought that way. He was funny, in a clever way that wasn’t obvious; you had to think about his punch-lines. His glasses were rimless, so that you sometimes forgot he was wearing them. Occasionally, after lectures, he would drop in to the flat that I shared with my friends Maxine and Helen, and we’d sit and watch Vanessa shows with topics like ‘I married a love rat’ or ‘my mum won’t stop touching my boyfriend’. I was always embarrassed if I was the only person in when he knocked on our back door and wandered in, in the way that students do. I always felt that he’d got a raw deal, because the other girls, who were both a size twelve, and one of whom I reasoned he must have fancied, weren’t there. So I’d overact and try too hard, to make him feel better. Ian tried to kiss me on three separate occasions, twice drunk, once sober. He never tried to kiss Maxine or Helen as far as I am aware, even the night we all got drunk because they were both leaving to teach English in Japan. Each time I ran away, unable to accept his kiss, convinced that he was trying only because he couldn’t be with the girl he really wanted, or because he was too drunk to know better and would hate himself in the morning. I couldn’t accept, given the options available, that he would pick me. I wasn’t in love with him, but I wish I’d let him kiss me.

  And so I envy those glorious women for whom it is truly no issue, those soft and curved women carrying three or four or five or ten stones too many, who love themselves, and the way they look, and allow others to love them at the same time. I suppose the fat fall into two categories. The ones who are happy with their choice, and the ones who aren’t but can’t seem to change it. I let food, just food, just a sandwich or a slice of pizza or a hamburger or a bag of crisps or a Twix, run and ruin my life for so long. The real difference between me then and me now is in that sentence: it’s just food. If you don’t want to be fat, find something else to love instead.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you – are you working?’

  ‘Not yet, Mum. It’s only twenty to nine.’

  ‘I’m worried about you, Sunny.’

  I gulp loudly. My mother has never openly expressed ‘worry’ for me before.

  ‘I do eat, you know,’ I say defensively, only a little pleased.

  ‘Not that. I am worried about that awful thing you told me about.’ I had filled her in on the evening of the incident, about the Stranger and Dougal and Cagney and all of it. She had fallen very quiet once I had finished reciting my tale, and said she was glad that I was OK, and very proud, but the way that Dougal’s mother felt was the way that she felt now, even if he was only two and I was twenty-eight, and I should never do anything like that again. She asked if I had eaten and told me to have dessert as a treat. If I couldn’t have it now, when could I? Except that’s an argument that’s wearing thin …

  ‘Mum, there is nothing to worry about. It’s all done with.’

  ‘But how can it be? What about a court date? When you have to see him again? I’ll come, of course.’

  ‘I haven’t heard anything, and you can come if you want to, Mum, but I don’t need you to, I’ll be fine. How is Dad?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the same as usual. He couldn’t get parked at Sainsbury’s this morning. Honestly, Sunny, never marry a man who shows even the slightest interest in parking.’

  ‘OK, I won’t.’

  ‘Are you still seeing that boy?’

  ‘Kind of, I’m not sure, maybe …’

  ‘Well, if he’s not right don’t waste any time on him, Sunny,’ she says firmly.

  My mother thinks I am stronger than I am. I think she might kid herself that I have waited this long through choice.

  ‘I thought I might pop over on Friday, darling. We could go for lunch. We could see if Elaine is free.’

  ‘OK, but I have to work.’ My mother thinks that working from home is the same as not working at all.

  ‘Surely you can break for lunch, Sunny?’

  ‘Of course I can.’ I feel instantly guilty. It’s a special gift my mother has.

  ‘OK, well then, I’ll see you on Friday as long as your father lets me drive over to you.’ She sighs again, but we both know that she backs the car into stationary objects on a weekly basis, so I don’t blame Dad for not wanting her behind the wheel.

  I hang up the phone after quick goodbyes, and chuck it onto my dressing table. I haven’t forgotten what I was doing before my mother rang.

  I put the Fondler back under the covers and flick the switch, and the whirring starts again.

  I lie back, with my eyes closed, and picture Cagney. I ca
n picture anything I like, I can picture anything I like – I run the words through my head, as my mind fails to conjure up an image any more exciting than Cagney just standing outside Starbucks in his overcoat.

  I blink my eyes quickly to cut off from that image and think of another one. I deliberately picture Cagney opening the door to my bedroom.

  ‘What have you got there?’ he asks evenly.

  ‘Just lending myself a hand,’ I reply.

  I shudder a little, as I picture Cagney unbuttoning his shirt. He is wearing a shirt, and not a rollneck. It’s my fantasy; he’ll wear what I want. He comes to sit by me on the bed, and peels back the duvet to investigate.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he says softly.

  He leans in and kisses me slowly, placing his hand behind my neck to pull my mouth further on to his.

  ‘Let me do that,’ he says, and takes the Fondler out of my hands …

  Maybe it was just the Fondler. Maybe it’s just that good. But it was the most powerful, exciting, excruciating, joyous orgasm I have ever had.

  My therapist is a deep dark brown. He is sporting the kind of tan that only middle-aged men are able to achieve. He looks like an expensive suitcase. As soon as I walk into his office I notice it, or rather I notice the crazy whiteness of his eyes, in contrast to the berry brown of his cheeks. I am immediately jealous. Everybody, even my therapist, looks better with a golden hue. I want to be sunkissed.

  His tan doesn’t make him act any differently, and I am surprised. I feel like it would be more appropriate if, rather than sitting down, crossing his legs, asking how I am, he lit a suspicious roll-up, poured himself a large measure of something sepia and potent, and asked me, ‘What’s your pleasure, treasure?’

  ‘Rainy season?’ I ask as I sit in my usual spot but on an unusual day. If I judged my friendships purely on the amount of time spent with somebody, I should be exchanging homemade best friend bracelets with my therapist about now.