Odyssey In A Teacup

by Paula Houseman

‘Um ... yeah. I did.’ In fact, I hated it when Joe did it and it was no better said with a Texan twang. ‘But I didn’t want to make a big deal about it.’

  ‘It is a big deal,’ Maxi said. ‘It’s demeaning to women. I wouldn’t allow that.’

  ‘Same,’ said Vette.

  Then why did I?

  Because I’d become inured to it. I felt kind of small when Joe spoke to me that way, but I ignored my feelings about it because I wanted to see him as the good guy. Sylvia was the enemy, wimpy Myron was Switzerland, and even though Joe didn’t protect me, I needed an ally in that house, so I convinced myself that he was it. But this question opened my eyes. I’d been blind to Joe’s role in shaping my views of myself as a woman and what I could be capable of. My perception of him as God and Santa had obscured his influence over me. But I could now see that he didn’t have much respect for women. Just like Jed David Evans.

  ‘I was doe-eyed when Evans threw me a crumb and actually called me Ruth! So I guess I deified him.’

  ‘Hmm ... worshipping the god of misogyny,’ Ralph suggested.

  Vette asked me, ‘Who was the original one? The god of misogyny in the myths?’

  ‘Ooh ... er—’

  ‘I don’t know a whole lot about mythology the way you do, but weren’t all the gods pussy-whipped?’ asked Maxi.

  ‘Seems like it—their goddesses were no shrinking violets. So ... it’s a tough call.’

  Ralph disagreed. ‘Not really. I’d say it’s a no-brainer. Uranus.’

  We laughed, but Ralph’s assumption seemed reasonable, and not just in the literal sense (because Dr Jed Evans was an arsehole). There was more to it than that. Uranus—this god of the sky—was married to Gaia, the earth goddess. Turns out Uranus’s castration by their not-so-charming son Cronus was instigated by mommy. She even made him an iron sickle to carry out the deed. Conclusion? The sublime, wide-bosomed earth mother was the master ball-breaker. And with what seemed to be Evans’s misogynistic tendencies, you could easily deduce that Uranus was often running the show in his psyche.

  But with their human qualities, the gods could be screw-ups. And Uranus let the side down when he expressed through Evansanus.

  Jed Evans was the employer who had let rip and then tried to falsely incriminate his doorknob. The invention of the doorknob in the late nineteenth century was probably motivated by the need to blame something other than the dog. God knows, Joe managed to (he owed Alexander Graham Bell a debt of gratitude). But his farts were deliberate and birthed with pride, not treated like mistakes cloaked in shame as Evans had done. In that moment, he didn’t man up, and I lost respect for him because of it.

  This doorknob incident was the deal-breaker for me. There had been an uncomfortable similarity between my working environment and my home environment: I didn’t know anything about misogyny back then, but I knew plenty about scapegoating. It reeked of injustice (even if the easy mark was only a doorknob). I handed in my notice because I could no longer work for someone I’d lost respect for.

  ‘Did you actually have any for him in the first place?’ Ralph asked. ‘Is deifying someone the same as respecting them?’ He had a point.

  I sighed. ‘Vette was right; this is all a little too much reality. Enlightenment kinda sucks.’

  ‘At first, yeah. But like I suggested earlier, you can’t change something if you can’t see what’s wrong with it.’

  The thing is, once you open the door to one area you get to see the shortcomings in others. Unlike Ralph, Maxi and Vette, I’d had no professional life to speak of. But my domestic life was not in great working order either.

  Without thinking, I blurted out, ‘Things aren’t so stable at home.’ They looked at me in shock.

  ‘Since when?’ asked Vette.

  ‘Couple of years.’

  ‘A couple of years!’ repeated Maxi.

  ‘Probably even longer.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

  ‘And why am I only hearing this now?’ Ralph was upset. He’d always been my confidant but I hadn’t shared this with him.

  ‘I felt ashamed. He’s ... Reuben,’ I looked at Maxi and shrugged resignedly.

  ‘As in, the “The Perfect One”?’ Vette drew air quotes with her fingers. ‘The man who ticks all the boxes.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘We’re not Sylvia, Ruthie,’ Maxi said.

  ‘I know. I was still scared to tell you. And the timing had to feel right, I guess. All our eyes have been opened this weekend.’ I then looked at Ralph apologetically. ‘And there was pride too. I didn’t want to admit it even to myself.’

  ‘How bad is it?’ Maxi asked.

  ‘It’s not good.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Vette asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I teared up.

  ‘Whatever you decide, we’re here for you,’ Maxi reassured me.

  ‘I know. Thank you.’

  They wanted details. I told them about Reuben’s inability (or unwillingness) to communicate, and that I couldn’t be bothered trying anymore, which saw us drifting further and further apart. We talked till midnight, when we all hugged and went to our respective rooms.

  ‘Don’t shut me out. Please,’ Ralph whispered as he left me at the door to my room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:

  THERE’S THE RUB

  Things deteriorated when I got home. Reuben didn’t like the new me. He thought the look was way too flamboyant for a ‘middle-aged mother’. It was ironic that what had captivated him when we first got together now seemed to constitute a threat to his neat, ordered little world. ‘We’ decided a lot of our problems stemmed from my family dysfunction, and it would be a good idea if I worked on myself.

  I went to see a therapist who, based on the little I had told him, explained me to myself in great detail and gave me advice on how to do things differently (Ralph refused to be my therapist because he wasn’t objective enough—the emotional ties we had were too strong. But he was like a one-man cheering squad).

  ‘Oh, crap! This guy is a male version of Sylvia! Except with a psychology degree.’ I was sitting opposite Ralph in a café as the realisation hit.

  He just smiled. Bound by ethics, he didn’t comment on the therapist in question.

  ‘Maybe Reuben’s right,’ I said, resignedly.

  ‘Maybe Reuben’s in denial.’

  ‘Maybe. Either way, it’s just so hard at the moment, Ralph. I’m feeling an incredible sense of loss.’

  ‘Understandable when your marriage is no longer on solid ground.’

  ‘It’s not even that so much. It’s because I’ve lost me.’

  Ralph shook his head emphatically. ‘No. Who you are is still there. You’ve just lost consciousness of it.’

  I nodded. ‘I know this sounds strange, but I kinda miss being a pest.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound strange to me at all. I miss it, too. And you weren’t a pest; you were just a wild child.’

  ‘What am I gonna do about it?’

  Ralph shrugged. ‘Um, I guess you just have to become a pain in the arse again.’ We both laughed.

  ‘Seriously, though, I want me back!’

  ‘Well ... that means you have to retrieve your spirit.’ He smiled wryly.

  ‘Ralph. I am not going to another bloody meditation night.’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t going to suggest that.’

  ‘And I don’t wanna see another therapist, either.’

  ‘No. You don’t need to be psychoanalysed.’ He regarded me with a contemplative eye. ‘What about some bodywork? Massage.’

  ‘No-no-no! Remember Dee?’

  ‘Yeah, but that was twenty years ago. You’re not the same person.’

  ‘No ... I’m not. I’m even more lost.’

  ‘Ruthie, you’ve got an awareness now that you didn’t have back then.’

  ‘I guess. But being aware that I’m drawn to “mummy” and “daddy” stand-ins doesn’t exactly comfort me, you know.’

/>   ‘Mmm ... I hear you. But just remember you’re going into things with your eyes open now. And those stand-ins become more diluted versions.’

  I took a breath and blew out long and hard.

  ‘Look, massage is a great way of unlocking stuff.’

  ‘Okay, okay! But I want someone who’s recommended.’

  Ralph thought about this for a bit. ‘A co-worker of mine swears by one called Raine. Gemma has a massage with her every week during one of her lunchbreaks, and she comes back so relaxed.’

  Ralph got me the details and I made an appointment.

  Raine worked from home. Five minutes before my ten o’clock appointment, I parked in front of her house. A quaint little cottage with a hedge of lovingly tended rose bushes along the front fence, it was across the road from Henley Beach. Ordinarily, I’d consider it a great location, but it was a bit too close to the pool where I’d lost my bloomers all those years before. I hoped to God this wasn’t a bad omen. As I approached the front door, though, I was seized with a sense of foreboding. Brushing it off as just some residual fear from my first and only massage, I rang the bell. An attractive looking, slightly built, henna-haired woman opened the door and greeted me with an angelic smile.

  ‘Hello. You must be Ruth. Welcome.’ She extended her hand as she introduced herself. ‘I’m Raine Bow.’

  Shit!

  Ralph had only been given her first name. I was tempted to leave, but I convinced myself it would be okay because she hadn’t just stepped out of the shower with a fluffy, white towel wrapped around her waist and she didn’t look like a member of ‘The Family’.

  I let Raine lead me inside and was hit by a strong, musky, sweet, sweaty smell as we walked through the lounge room. I nervously took in the surrounds. Against a backdrop of beige walls, there was an assortment of what looked like Native American artefacts: a peace pipe on a rough-hewn wooden coffee table, a full headdress of fur and brown feathers hanging on the main wall, and lined up along a heavy timber buffet was a collection of Navajo pottery (I recognised these because Hannah had done a school project on Navajo arts and crafts), and a bowl of what looked like red dates. The pièce de résistance, though, was mounted above a doorway that led into the kitchen: a taxidermied bovine’s arse!

  I knew that people mounted stuffed animal heads, but this was a novel idea, although incongruous with the other pieces. It conveyed the message ‘Bite me!’ (or maybe, kish ma ken tookhus?). This sort of thing was more my speed, and the urge to laugh warmed and relaxed me.

  I followed Raine through her bright, cheery, very yellow kitchen, and into a little sunroom with pastel blue walls, and a massage table in the centre. Just then, a tall man emerged from a small anteroom off the sunroom. I assumed by his appearance (and because of the collection in the lounge room) he was Native American: brown skin, dark brown, almond shaped eyes, prominent cheekbones, and long black hair, which he wore in a braid hanging down his back.

  Raine introduced me to him. ‘Oh, darling, this is Ruth. Ruth, this is my partner, Flanagan.’

  NO! ... Really? I’d seen too many TV Westerns as a kid. I expected his name to be Hiawatha or Brave Eagle or Chingachgook. Or maybe, Two Dogs Fucking (I’d also seen the movie Silkwood). Anyway, Raine’s beau shook my hand, told me to enjoy my massage—with nary a hint of a Celtic accent—grabbed his car keys and took off.

  Raine told me to strip down completely. ‘Or you can leave your tighty whities on if that’s more comfortable for you,’ she offered.

  Just the ‘tighty whities’? The warm feelings that had come over me had quickly passed over me. I was fully dressed, yet I felt naked and uneasy. Might Flanagan have an Indian Buffalo-hide coat in his cupboard?

  ‘Um, I think I’ll leave my, er, undies on.’

  Reluctantly, I stripped. I was lying face down on the table with the towel over and tucked in tight around me when she came back into the room.

  ‘Tell me a little about your journey,’ she asked as she struggled to pull the towel down, and started massaging my back. I couldn’t feel any warty projection on her fingers, so I started to relax.

  ‘Well, I got abused on the way here. Some guy cut in front of me. I had to slam on the brakes hard and I beeped him. He somehow ended up next to me at the second set of lights and started yelling at me. I very calmly told him he should go home and take his antipsychotic pills. Wasn’t what he expected; I think he was looking for a stoush, so he was speechless—’

  ‘Um ... I meant your journey through life. But this is good. This little incident is part of it. And I feel overjoyed to hear you spoke your truth.’

  Overjoyed? Seriously? A little over the top, Raine, considering you don’t even know me.

  And then Raine’s overjoyousness spilled over and rained down on me ... she kissed my head.

  Whoa, Nellie! I felt overwhelmed. ‘Er, that makes me really, really uncomfortable.’

  I’m not sure if Raine felt so overjoyed that I spoke my truth to her because she stopped rubbing and there was a long tense silence until she broke it.

  ‘I am honoured by your truth.’

  Jesus! Talk about overdone. It seemed Raine, who’d kissed my head, had now kissed my arse. I hoped that the odour I’d detected when I first arrived was pot, and that she was stoned, which would justify her behaviour. She continued rubbing and it was one long hour of friction. There was no time-travelling back into the past like with Dee; I had to stay present just in case Raine had an urge to kiss any other body part. I dressed so quickly when it was over, I put my sweater on back to front. No matter. I paid, dashed out and immediately called Ralph when I got home.

  ‘Well, your dilution theory’s bang on. Raine is more diluted. She’s so diluted, she’s vapour floating out there in the ether!’ I related the whole episode in detail. Ralph laughed.

  ‘Oh, nice. Do you laugh at your clients when they tell you their stories?’

  ‘Of course not! They don’t tell them so colourfully. And by the way, those red-looking dates—probably jujubes. They can have a narcotic effect; they’re from the Zizyphus Lotus tree.’ Ralph’s extensive knowledge about nothing and everything always astounded me. ‘Raine was probably spaced out from eating too many of—’

  ‘Wait a second ... lotus tree? Oh my God, I was massaged by a Lotus-eater! In Greek mythology—in The Odyssey—the Lotus-eaters were natives that were permanently zonked ‘cause they lived on the lotus fruit, nothing else!’

  All these encounters with crazies ... bloody hell! I wasn’t trapped in Basic Instinct like I’d thought ten years earlier; I was trapped in an ancient mythical reality. And I wasn’t drawn to people like my parents; I was drawn to their three-thousand-year-old ancestors! I told Ralph as much.

  ‘Hmm ... could be you’ve finally found where you fit.’

  ‘Oh, just great!’

  ‘It’s not a bad thing. At least myth doesn’t sugar-coat reality. Maybe you need to willingly inhabit it for a while.’

  ‘I do inhabit myth! I just said that.’

  ‘No, you’re bogged in it. And you’re spinning your wheels because you keep trying to run from the muddy side of it.’

  ‘So ... you want me to live in the shitty past?’

  ‘No! But you’ll keep living it out until you go right into it and bring back that wild, high-spirited “you” that’s smothered by the muddy stuff.’

  I didn’t much like what I was hearing, but Ralph was right. And the sobering truth was that no fairy tale hero was going to save me from the old villains in my mind. I sighed.

  ‘Ruthie, don’t give up.’

  It seemed to me that once you start going back, ironically, there’s no going back. ‘Okay. I just don’t wanna be touched by another Lotus-eater ... and I don’t want another harpy shitting on me or a gorgon calcifying me.’

  ‘Fair enough. There is another masseuse I’ve just heard about, and apparently, she’s got a very good reputation.’

  Maia Gray’s name was familiar. I’d heard about her be
fore; didn’t pay much attention at the time. At least she had a normal name—well, one that didn’t set off alarm bells—so I booked an appointment with her.

  Maia’s room was in a small building that housed a podiatrist, a psychologist and a naturopath. The room was light and airy, the décor, spartan. Other than two white wicker chairs on the side of the room and a massage table in the centre, there was not much else there. A hand basin stood below a small window covered by cream, filigree pinch pleat curtains. The carpet was soft beige, the walls were painted a fresh white, and there were no stuffed animal keisters mounted on any of them. Instead, sixteen small, framed certificates were strategically mounted on the wall next to the door. As I was easily impressed by people’s show of credentials (just like Sylvia), I took these as a bold endorsement of her skills.

  Maia was a softly spoken woman. We sat opposite each other on the wicker chairs and she asked me some questions about my general health. Professional. A good start. Maia then asked me if I would like my feet washed. I’m not sure if she offered this as a religious act of salvation, or because she feared they might stink. Either way, it couldn’t hurt, so I let her. It was quite a pleasant experience, as was the massage itself. No warts, no disturbing music, no head kissing, no butt kissing and no New Age parlance. Maia then left the room as I got dressed. I felt relaxed and happy when she came back a few minutes later. I would have made another appointment, if not for Maia’s parting words.

  ‘Can I hug you?’

  No! What is it with this need to hug strangers? This woman had just rubbed my inner thighs, my chest, my stomach—my whole body—with her hands, but asking me for a hug felt like she was overstepping the boundaries of what’s appropriate. My gynaecologist palpates my breasts and puts his fingers up my doodah, but if he asked me for a hug, I would be horrified. I honestly don’t want to be more than just a twat to him, even though I hate that women are objectified.

  I answered Maia. ‘Um ... no thank you.’

  Her face turned red with embarrassment, and my lovely, happy, calm feelings went out the little curtained window.

  I left there and dropped in to see Ralph. ‘You can shove your massages!’ I told him what had happened. He slowly nodded and rubbed his chin. I wondered if he ralphulated with his clients.