The Booby Trap and Other Bits and Boobs

by Dawn O'Porter

  LAURA WHITMORE

  I always wanted boobs. I think I may have lit a candle for them as a kid after mass praying … Although I’m sure I told my mother I was praying for world peace.

  At age thirteen, I was still wearing one of those cotton vest tops (the type your five-year-old brother wears) and I remember changing after a swimming lesson and seeing that one of my classmates had an ACTUAL bra! I’ll never forget the look she gave me as she gazed at my perplexed, forlorn face staring at her and then dropped her eyes down to the baggy bobbly off-white vest that was hiding … Well, hiding nothing, as I didn’t have anything to hide. She smirked and I died inside.

  I went straight home that afternoon and bellowed through the front door, ‘Mammy, I need a BRA!!!’ I definitely didn’t, but as Mammy Whitmore’s only daughter, she conceded.

  Aged sixteen and going to the local disco, I only had two small bumps where my breasts should be. I had a solution. Two padded bras. Now this may sound stupid, but I swear it was my saviour. Thankfully no guys came near me so there was no fear of anyone finding out my situation as they rummaged in the ‘under jumper/over bra area’.

  My friend’s mam used to sow her two bras together, which seemed extreme, but even more effective. One bra slipping below the other can end up with the dreaded four breasts look, which is actually worse than the flat-chested look.

  I was seventeen when my boobs properly blossomed into 32Ds. Of course they didn’t grow at the same time – oh God, wouldn’t that have made life so much easier. So I had to wait at least six months for the left one to catch up with the right one. We’ve been on an incredible journey, my boobs and I, and we still have our arguments, especially when they prevent me from fitting into a designer sample-size dress, but they’re mine and I’ve accepted them … for better or for worse.

  Uplifted

  MATT WHYMAN

  Nobody knew what to say when Eric came to work with the tits. In fact, nobody said anything for several shifts. Not to his face, at any rate. Even meeting his eyes was a struggle, what with the rack that had materialised under his shirt.

  ‘It can’t be a boob job,’ I whispered on a break from the phones. ‘Can it?’

  I was in the canteen with Melanie and Tom from Retentions. Eric was standing in the queue with his tray, though we doubted he could see it on account of his cleavage. It was just so unexpected from such a clean-cut, regular guy.

  ‘He’s a middle-aged man, married with kids.’ This was Tom, convinced it was a wind-up or a thing for charity. ‘He’s got some socks up there.’

  ‘Big socks,’ Mel noted. ‘Massive.’

  For a moment, the three of us watched as Eric took his turn in front of the lunch technician behind the sneeze counter. On seeing him, or rather his breasts, she reached for a spatula as if preparing to swat a fly. Eric greeted her, and then pointed to the sausage and mash. It took a moment for the poor woman to blink and serve him, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, Eric looked really quite cheery as he took his tray to the table. Just then, he stood out more for his mood than the mammaries I believed he’d had fitted. Like everyone else, Eric was normally doleful and sullen. This was a call centre, after all. We came here to earn a living, and paid for it with our souls.

  It was Greg from Assurance who finally asked him straight up. Eric had just walked into the gents, where the man was in mid flow. He left a urinal between them, as is convention, though Greg had no interest in seizing a glimpse of what he was packing down there.

  ‘Mate,’ he said finally, on zipping himself up. ‘Are they for real?’

  Eric looked around, beaming broadly.

  ‘My bosoms?’ he said to clarify, as if there was anything else of note about him, and finished with a deft shake. ‘Sure.’

  It must have taken Greg some guts to just ask the guy direct. Nobody else had begun to find a way to address the issue. Even so, when Eric replied so freely, it left poor Greg quite unprepared to follow it up.

  ‘Right,’ he said, and hurried across to the taps. ‘Thanks.’

  When Eric appeared at the sink beside his, Greg responded by washing his hands vigorously.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Eric after a moment. ‘There’s no reason for either of us to be embarrassed. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me anything.’

  ‘I’m good,’ said Greg, who then backed away from the sink and returned to work with soap on his hands.

  Once word of the encounter spread across the centre, it wasn’t long before people mustered the courage to take things further with Eric. I was on the phones when our line manager approached his booth. She lived by the company rule book. If a clause were added to cut out our tongues, she’d have been the first to find a knife and instruct us to form an orderly queue. At the time, I was having my ear chewed off by a customer with anger issues. This happened so often throughout each shift that I’d learned to tune out the ranting and listen to conversations around me. It didn’t do much for my spirits, but I’d yet to take the lift to the roof terrace and jump off. I sat up straight in my seat, which allowed me to see over the edge of the divider as the woman who signed off our time sheets perched on Eric’s desk and asked him to skip the next call.

  ‘I think you know why I’m here,’ she said, possibly unaware that every phone drone within earshot was now watching them closely.

  Eric looked puzzled, and yet he didn’t stop smiling.

  ‘Is it my performance?’ he asked.

  ‘No, that’s fine. It’s your … enhancement.’

  In the pause before she put her concern into words, I watched the colour in her cheeks begin to blossom. Eric simply sat there, with that blissful expression set across his face.

  ‘I had them done on my week off,’ he said, cupping his chest as if to show her. ‘The soreness has almost gone now. I can’t wear an underwire for a couple more weeks, but that hasn’t stopped me shopping for bras. I’m building quite a collection!’

  At first, it looked as if our line manager would respond by fainting. Instead, with what must’ve been a herculean effort, she mustered the focus to nod and clear her throat.

  ‘Eric, is everything OK at home? Do we need to know about any difficulties?’

  Eric looked to one side for a moment, still looking strikingly sunny, and then shook his head.

  ‘It’s all good,’ he said simply, just as his phone began to ring. He gestured at the headset on his desk. ‘Shall I?’

  Our line manager didn’t appear to register the phone for a moment. When Eric repeated himself, it seemed to come as quite a shock to her.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, and gave him space so he could take the call. ‘Sorry.’

  It was no understatement to say that I loathed my job. Tied up in targets, there was no room to be human. Seeking new horizons, in the current climate, was frankly a pipe dream. All we could do was hit the numbers until the time arrived when we’d all be replaced by computers. As a result, an air of utter desolation hung over the call centre cubicles.

  Every now and then, the line managers would be sent in to pull a stunt in a bid to force some laughter, but it was always so fake that it teetered on tears. They’d been known to wear fairy wings or rubber rings, and once a month we’d assemble to play the kind of motivational games that made a bullet in the head seem like a kinder option. So, it was striking how Eric’s spirit seemed to sky rocket following his breast augmentation. We began using the technical term after chatting to him about the procedure. As more people braved a conversation, it just seemed like less of a big deal. Eric wasn’t embarking on some gender reassignment, we learned. What’s more, having discussed his reasons in full with his family, he’d undergone the procedure with their blessing and support. He did admit to Les in Escalations that the idea just popped into his head one day, but he stressed that it had taken several months before he decided to make the investment. That was how Eric described it sometimes, as if he’d placed money in a savings account with a high return.

 
‘I wish I’d done it earlier in life,’ he once told me in between calls. I hadn’t started the conversation. Eric had heard me quietly tapping my forehead against the desk in a bid to just feel something, and popped up looking positively beatific. I’d asked him what he had to be so buoyant about, but by then he didn’t need to spell it out. In fact, now that he was free to wear any bra of his choosing, the balcony number that he favoured made him appear even more uplifted. ‘I appreciate it might look unconventional,’ he added, as my phone began to ring. ‘But what matters most is how it makes me feel on the inside.’

  Back in my bedsit that evening, after a ready meal in front of some reality TV on repeat, I turned in for an early night. I had nothing exciting to get up for, but sleep was the only time I could slip from my grim existence. I shed my work uniform, which always seemed so pointless when we were invisible to the public, and caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. Pulling back my shoulders, I considered myself for a moment. For a man in his mid-forties, my hairline was on the wane, while my waist was thickening no matter how many extra miles I put in on the treadmill. Studying my reflection, I cupped my chest and pushed both inwards and up. Frankly, there was enough give there for me to shape them into something more becoming. I held them in place for a short while. Then, dismissing an idea that sprang into my mind, I turned to my teeth to see if I needed to floss.

  Six weeks after Eric’s transformation, during which time he had nailed four silver stars for his shirt pocket in recognition of his call turnover, I had a chance to feel his personal work first hand. I wasn’t alone. Having walked into the gents, I found a small queue of colleagues awaiting their turn. Eric didn’t seem to mind at all. He had even unbuttoned his shirt to enable a close examination. At first it looked like a sexual thing, but the guys were quick to stress this was purely driven by curiosity.

  ‘Be my guest,’ said Eric, when I caught his eye. ‘Cop a feel.’

  It had been some time since I’d placed my palms on bare breasts. The divorce had seen to that several years back. Tentatively, having warmed my hands by blowing on them, I covered Eric’s chest with my fingers splayed.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, on noting how his nipples impressed upon my palms. ‘They’re really kind of perfect.’

  ‘I know,’ said Eric proudly. ‘It’s been the making of me.’

  I made way for Will from Relations and Support, but studied Eric’s face the whole time. He just seemed so jubilant to be sharing this moment with us. It was as if his enhancement wasn’t something he had done for himself but the benefit of everyone around him.

  ‘Man, that felt good,’ said Will, before leading everyone back to work with what was clearly a spring in his step.

  I had been in the job as long as Eric. We started in the same week, in fact. Back then, I took to the phones with vigour and vim. Now, I just felt worn out and washed up. I worked to pay the rent, the maintenance and bills, with a little tucked away each month for a rainy day. I couldn’t remember the last time the sun had shone, but then nor did it truly pour. Every morning I awoke to the sound of drizzle, which was marginally more powerful than my power shower on full tilt. At work, hearing Eric in the cubicle next to mine was about the only thing that stopped me from heading home, slotting my head in the oven and then wishing that I was on gas. He laughed and joked with the callers, wishing every single one of them a nice day as his way of signing off. It should’ve made me grind my molars down to stumps. Instead, it sounded so heartfelt that I wished I could muster the same spirit. Even on tea breaks, when it was customary to just sit there staring at the walls, people began to gravitate towards Eric for conversation and entertainment. Any men who viewed his breasts with suspicion or ridicule were quickly won over, while I noted how the women seemed completely at ease in his company.

  All I wanted to do was experience just a hint of Eric’s joy for life. That winter, when I left the call centre with him one evening, and just before we went our separate ways, I turned to him and asked outright.

  ‘Your breasts,’ I said. ‘Would a pair do the same thing for me?’

  It was a chill evening. Even in his quilted coat, zipped up to the throat, there was no hiding Eric’s cleavage. In a way, I had grown so used to seeing his boobs that the man would’ve looked odd without them.

  ‘It all comes down to making the most of what little we have,’ he said eventually, before sharing something with me that I hadn’t expected.

  I watched him head into the night, both hands buried in his pockets and his shoulders swinging with each stride. A moment later, I found myself nodding, as if I understood Eric’s reasons for what he’d just told me. It all made sense now I saw things through his eyes. Above all, men had been admiring and desiring the bosom for all the wrong reasons. We had denied ourselves the chance to look and feel magnificent. It was all a question of confidence, I realised. I had a life to celebrate, and not squander for a moment longer, even if that meant taking risks.

  I knew where to find the clinic. It wasn’t far off my route home. As I’d made the same journey twice a day for a lifetime, even the detour felt like a liberation. There would be no going back. My rainy day had arrived. I didn’t even think about bailing as I approached the clinic’s revolving door. If anything, I felt like I had come home. I pushed through, and found myself in a reception that was so blindingly white it might’ve been modelled on heaven. The lady behind the desk looked up from her monitor and asked how she could help.

  ‘I’m interested in an enhancement,’ I told her, adding, ‘top half,’ in case she was in any doubt.

  ‘Then you’ve come to the right place,’ she said, without any hesitation or surprise. ‘If you’d just like to complete this assessment form first. After that we can discuss your options in more detail.’

  ‘Great,’ I said, and took the documents from her. ‘I’ll fill it in right now. Might as well seize the moment!’

  It felt great to be fired up by something for once. I couldn’t wait for this journey to begin.

  ‘You’re welcome to take a seat over there,’ she said, gesturing behind me. ‘If you can find a space.’

  I smiled and turned, faltering only when I saw the sofa and the fact that two of the three spots had been taken. Still, there was enough room in the middle, and I felt sure the pair busy signing off their forms would squeeze up for me.

  ‘Have you heard?’ I asked, on dropping into the seat between Tom from Retentions and Les in Escalations. ‘Eric is moving on.’

  Storm in an AA Cup

  LARA WILLIAMSON

  I loved the 1939 movie of The Wizard of Oz. I loved it so much I could have pooped rainbows and it would have been no biggie. Dorothy was my girl crush du jour with her cutesy gingham pinafore, her silken pigtails and her feet made of rubies. I knew her songs by heart, even that funny verse about chimneys in Over the Rainbow. Bored in the Christmas holidays, a gang of us decided to put on a pantomime for the street we lived in. We had to make our own amusement somehow. Well, the rest is history, because in my opinion The Wizard of Oz was the best pantomime known to mankind and the Dorothy part was going to be mine, my pretties.

  My mates didn’t argue with the plan. Well, who would when faced with someone in a gingham apron and their mother’s red slingbacks? During rehearsals, I spent many an hour wowing them with my impromptu whipping of my hair back and forth, running from side to side, my arms Muppet-flailing, and then falling into the hastily painted cardboard backdrop of Kansas. I was in an imaginary tornado, you see. I WAS living and breathing Dorothy Gale. My friends recognised me for the visionary genius I was.

  Oh yes, I took it seriously. Street show or not, you can’t channel Dorothy Gale half-heartedly. That would be criminal. For a start, the red slingbacks needed rhinestones. When I mooted the idea of gluing rubies to her shoes, my mother said no, fearing she’d have to walk the yellow brick road to town every time she wanted a bag of oven chips. Apparently, a modern-day Dorothy wasn’t all about the money. Or the bling. My m
other was Miss Gulch in disguise. I thought about offering her the part.

  The sad sequin-less ruby slippers without rubies I could just about cope with, but finding out that Judy Garland was actually sixteen and quite curvy when she played Dorothy, not so much. All would have been fine if I wasn’t still under a vest. I wanted everything to be perfect for my Dorothy homage and that meant growing my boobs in time for the performance and allowing them to spring forth like Toto frolicking in a field of poppies, or puppies. Okay, I admit it. It had ten per cent to do with Dorothy and ninety per cent because I JUST WANTED BIG BOOBS!

  Give it a few weeks and you’ll be juggling cantaloupes in the Emerald City, I thought. Those flying monkeys won’t be able to carry you because of the weight in your front carriage. Slow to catch on to this idea, my boobs remained tiny. With the performance looming I attempted to show them their true potential by shoving tennis balls down there. A sort of: ‘Hello boobs! Wake up, you lazy lumps of fat, milk glands and tissue!’

  They stayed more Munchkin than melon. Never fear, there was one thing I hadn’t tried: the power of mind over matter. I mind and my boobs matter. My boobs were not weak; they would rise to this challenge. Had they not already survived some eejit in the chip shop, battered sausage in one hand, honking them with the other? Had they not survived me falling off a wall and slamming the concrete with my entire body? Yes, I put my teeth through my lip but my chest was made of steel girders. Destroy my mouth but mess with my boobs at your peril, concrete pavement. Ha! And so it began. Day one: I waved my palms over my naked boobs shouting, ‘A-bra-ca-boob-ra!’ After fifty further attempts, I figured I was a candidate for RSI. Day two: I swore there was tingling in my boobs. Proper actual internal prickling, the kind of which only comes from one million Lilliputians wielding needle swords inside your boobs or swelling. I opted for swelling as I thought the Lilliputians were probably elsewhere, chaining Gulliver. Okay, I couldn’t see any movement in my breast department but as my mother said, ‘You don’t need to see God to know he exists.’