Nip 'N' Tuck (7 page)

Due to the pleasure of breast-feeding two children (thank
you
Penelope Leach), my boobs were like day-old party balloons with all the air leaked out. The most popular technique for flat-chested women to make themselves look ridiculous is the ‘Wonder-bra’ – so-called because as soon as you take it off, you wonder where the hell your tits went. My boobs were now strapped up on my neck someplace, like a couple of spare double chins.

Steeling myself, I let my eyes creep cringingly downwards. Well, it looked like that weed-whacker Hugo gave me was finally going to come in handy. A pelt of pubic growth sprouted from each leg hole. It was amazing my pudenda hadn’t been awarded National Park status. Snapping open the crotch press-studs, I immediately took to my pubes with a pair of the kids’ project scissors shouting ‘Timber!’ Ten minutes later I sneaked another look. Now my entire vulva just looked ragged. Oh, my God! And one of the pubes was grey! I cropped closer still. Soon the general effect was of a moulting shag rug. Frantic, I kept on trimming and shaping. Now my spiky fanny resembled a sea creature disturbed in a rock pool and prepared to attack. It gave ‘bad hair day’ a whole new meaning.

My eyes slid lower. Oh, God! My thighs were spilling over two black stocking tops like lava from a fresh volcano. Flinging the teddy floorwards, I tore off the nylons. Unfortunately, what lay beneath was acres of white flesh. Luckily, by rummaging in the bathroom cabinet, I found an old bottle of fast tan. While the kids yapped around me, demanding to know why their fingers and nostrils had to be kept apart when they so obviously
fitted
and whether sneezes were really ‘your soul trying to escape’, I slapped and slurped the tan on to my anaemic skin. There, that would do the trick.

But forty minutes or so later (after I’d explained to Jamie that only his Aunt Vicky was allowed to pick her nose – and then only from a catalogue and postulated with Julia on the theological concept of after-life) what had seemed richly Mediterranean in the privacy of my own bathroom had begun to look Rajhneeshi under the bright rays of late-afternoon sun. In fact, my ‘tan’ pulsated. It radiated – but more tandoori than tanning salon. I looked as if I was wearing a tangerine wet-suit, with darker elbow patches, knee-pads and ankle straps.

Heart palpitating, I checked the time. Six forty-five. Hugo would be home in fifteen minutes. After I had packed the children off to Cal’s next door garden to shoot some hoops and horse around, I frantically pumiced myself with a nailbrush while panic gnawed at my insides. No luck. I took to my poor body with a pot-scourer, exfoliating myself down to a pretzel. Still no improvement. Followed by a sand blaster. But still nothing. Just orange. I looked like a distress flare. People could employ me at the scene of a boating accident.

Oh, boy, did I feel sexy now. It was clear that I was soon going to be mastering
The Kama Sutra For One
. In desperation I reached for the sex aids. The benwah-balls brochure promised orgasmic bliss. But what it didn’t say was that inserting these chrome bowling balls would be like childbirth, only backwards. And with no epidural. And once I’d put them in, would I ever get them out again? If not, I was in for the most embarrassing airport security metal detector search ever. By the time I gave up, panting and exasperated, I was so depleted with exhaustion that I had to eat the banana-flavoured erecto-gel.

With the sound of my husband’s key grating in the lock, I leapt on to the bed to lie sensuously among pillows that I now noticed were splattered with squashed chicken nuggets. Eyes darting urgently downwards for a final check, I saw that my bright orange body was decorated in tiny handprints from where the kids had been clambering up me earlier. A trail of little paw marks had developed with Polaroid speed up both legs. Even stranger, I seemed to have hirsute toenails. Oh, God! My pube trimmings had fallen into the wet nail polish and dried there. As much as I yanked and pulled, they remained cement-rendered. So much for being ‘alluring’ and ‘sensual’! Distressed, I shoved my mohair feet under the sheet, which I tugged up over my puckered, baby-marked belly. I could hear Hugo’s step on the stair; he always came straight up to change out of his suit. Perspiration was beading my top lip. Dry of mouth, I licked my lips – only to discover I was still wearing moustache bleach. Dry-retching from the poisonous taste, I wiped it with the nearest thing to hand – which I identified too late as my expensive new lingerie. But then I gawked into the bedside mirror to see that the bleach had been on so long it had turned my top lip albino. It neoned out at me from my reflection – an iridescent white. Bloody hell! I also had a stress pimple erupting on my nose. Now
there
’s a good look – wrinkles and pimples.
Thank
you, God. To complete the seductive image, I then noticed a nasty underarm shaving rash. Worse, although I’d hidden my aggressive sea creature in a pair of delicate silk scanties, the spikes were poking through. Jesus! My pubic hairs could now shred a man, like Parmesan on a cheese grater.

I ripped off the scanties and balled them up behind the bed. By the time Hugo’s hand was on the door-knob, I was in such a panic I was tempted to drink the nail-polish remover with which I was desperately attempting to scrub off the pubed toe-varnish.

Get a grip, girl. My husband loved me because I was the loyal and devoted mother of his children, goddamn it. I suspected that the Texan Pant-snake Charmer had probably asked him to
Tell Me Where It Hurts
, so I needed to be fierce in pointing out that my adoration was not based on infatuation but on feelings that had grown during a real, in-sickness-and-in-oh-God-not-the-flu-again? relationship. I had to let him feel that, yes, I could live without him – because hey, I was a vibrant, independent career woman (despite the temporary set-back of being unemployed). But also that I’d definitely rather not. Needing him was not the same as being ‘needy.’

I clutched the erecto gel, which promised to ‘animate the phallus’. In just moments my Hugo’s penis would be so damn animated it would be signed up by a cartoon network.

I parted my lips into a warm and welcoming smile, lit up my eyes with love, vibrantly arranged my facial muscles into an independent-yet-needy look and turned to face my darling, dearest husband …

6

You Turn Me On Like a Cuisinart, Baby

‘
OH, FANCY A
quickie, do we?’ my husband said, in a voice meant to discourage.

‘As opposed to
what
?’ I retaliated, hurt. (This was
not
going to plan. I was
supposed
to be demure and desirable.)

‘I knew you’d get all vindictive about last night. It wasn’t my fault.’ He flumped on to the edge of the bed to shuck off his shoes. ‘The woman threw herself at me.’

I groaned. ‘Men always think women are hot for them. You could be stabbing a man repeatedly with a carving knife in the cardio-artery-vascular thingo and he’d still be thinking, Oh, wow, she really fancies me!’

He tugged impatiently at his tie, wrenching it from around his neck. ‘I fell prey to her transient glitter and I’m sorry,’ he said wearily. ‘But that kiss meant nothing to me. I love
you
, Lizzie.’ But his voice seemed thin and diffident.

‘Huh! You only love yourself, Hugo Frazer. When you come, you call out your
own
name!’ (
Oh, good one, Lizzie. I was obviously a graduate of the Andrea Dworkin School of Desirability
.)

It was his turn to bristle. ‘So, what are you saying exactly? That I have a big ego?’

‘Oh, is
that
what’s blocking out the sun?’ I shielded my eyes and squinted melodramatically.

‘I’m trying to be emotionally honest. I thought you women liked men who’re in touch with their feminine sides?’

‘Yeah, as long as it’s not on another female.’ I couldn’t help the bitterness in my voice. I’d wanted to be digni-bloody-fied, but anger was bubbling up and beginning to haemorrhage all over our oak-panelled sleigh bed. We were obviously having the fight I’d been too stunned to have the previous night. ‘By the way, it would be nice if you used some imagination in bed now and then.’

‘Oh, you mean I should imagine it’s good?’ He turned his back on me to peel off his pinstriped trousers.

I was crushed. ‘Are you insinuating that I’m not good in bed? Maybe I should go and get a
second opinion
.’ I squirmed in embarrassment as Hugo tossed back the sheet. My whole pudenda looked like Astroturf. You could play mini-golf down there.

But worse than him noticing was that he didn’t. He hadn’t even clocked that his wife was orange.

‘No.’ He sighed, yawning elaborately. ‘You’re a very proficient lover.’ Lying down, he gave my thigh the kind of perfunctory pat you’d give an old family pet.

‘Proficient!’ I reeled back as though he’d poured acid all over my body. ‘
Proficient?
The Nazi invasion of Belgium was
proficient
.’

‘Well …’ he groped verbally ‘… reliable then.’

‘Reliable? That’s
worse
. Mussolini’s
trains
were reliable.’

‘Well, reliable as in every Friday.’

‘I’m too tired the rest of the week!’ I counterattacked, turning my back on him and curling up into the foetal position. ‘Looking after
your
children.
I
’m the one who attends the school assemblies to hear the reports on ‘energetic events and their ergs’.
I
’m the one constantly reeking of Plasticine.’

‘That’s just an excuse and you know it. The big secret is just how much married women hate sex. That’s the great thing about having a baby, you don’t have to make love for months afterwards. To most wives “sexual freedom” means the freedom not to have sex. “Not tonight darling, I’m Having It All in the morning.” ’

‘I don’t know why I bother to take precautions.’ I extracted my diaphragm in one dextrous move and slapped it on to the side table. ‘I mean, an oral contraceptive is a conversation with you, Hugo.’ I threw myself out of bed and into my old silk dressing-gown, recalling, with a pang, the lace panties I’d bought for what I’d intended to be an erotic encounter.

Hugo hauled his bulk to a sitting position on the side of the bed. I noticed, dismayed, that he hadn’t bothered to take off his socks and vest. A gloomy silence descended on the bedroom. A dismal picture of the Slough of Married Despond mocked us from the mirror above the mantelpiece. ‘If our marriage was a restaurant, we’d be in the non-smoking, vegan-only section …’ I sighed … ‘unlike the All-You-Can-Eat-For-Free-Finger Buffet you devoured at the party last night.’

‘Let’s not fight, darling.’ He moved towards me. ‘It was nothing more than a pheromonal incident … Are the kids at Cal’s?’

‘Yes … A what?’

‘Pheromones. A hormonal smell that stampedes your glands and demands that you kiss that woman immediately.’

I eyed him glacially. ‘Couldn’t you just breathe through your mouth?’

Hugo spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘Men are trapped, Lizzie. Deep within the cortex of a man’s brain …’ now his warm, capable hands were kneading my knotted shoulders ‘… instantaneous judgements are made to ensure that we respond to beauty.’ He undid my old dressing-gown then placed his penis in my palm as methodically as he’d hand a scalpel to a surgical nurse. ‘And, yes, such behaviour is cruel and shallow, but it’s momentary, instantly regretted and, most importantly,
not our fault
.’ He moaned in expectation as I knelt down.

I cupped my husband’s splendid penis in two hands and addressed it wistfully. ‘What was a nice thing like you doing in a slut like that?’

‘I wasn’t
in
anybody. She was having trouble with her zip. That skirt was so tight it could only be removed by a surgical procedure.’

‘Oh! How convenient! And there you were with your bedside manner. How
could
you, Hugo!’ I stood up, letting go of my old friend. ‘That woman’s so man-handled, so fingered, so
pawed
, she could be exhibit A in the forensics department of Scotland Yard!’

‘Kissing’s not that big a deal, is it? I mean, for Christ’s sake, these things happen every day.’

‘Yes … in
Las Vegas
!’ I harrumphed to the bed and flopped back down on it. ‘A kiss, Dr Frazer, is a contraction of the mouth due to an engorgement of the dick.’

‘Oh, listen!’ Hugo cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Do you hear that yelping noise? Oh, wait. It’s just
you
, barking up the wrong tree.’

‘Yelping?’ I withered. ‘Hey, if you want to get rid of me, throw a stick. Obviously I’ll run after it. Let’s see if I can catch a frisbee with my
teeth
.’

Hugo rubbed his furrowed brow as he followed me back to bed. ‘Why does a woman always misconstrue innocuous statements to mean her husband wants to be rid of her?’

‘Oh, so
that
’s what Britney is – an innocuous statement?’

‘God, I don’t know.’ His hand was on my nipple rolling it half-heartedly between forefinger and thumb. ‘I don’t know why I did it, Liz. Maybe I’m having a midlife crisis.’

‘Well, you’re definitely giving
me
one.’

‘It is well documented, dearest – the medical phenomenon of the male menopause.’ He ran his hands soothingly down my body and between my legs, spreading my lips with the deft precision of a gynaecologist undertaking a routine cervical smear. ‘The craving for emotional intensity, the desire for heart-fluttering human drama …’

‘Couldn’t you have just gone whitewater rafting? Male midlife crisis! What a load of crap. It’s nothing more then ovulation envy.’

‘Please forgive me,’ he begged penitentially. If his voice had had legs it would have been on its knees. ‘I’m really, really sorry. You’re the only woman in the world for me.’ He picked up my diaphragm, folded it in half like a letter and posted it between my parted thighs.

But jealousy had sidled in and taken up residency. ‘What really upsets me is how you could fancy
her
. I mean, the woman has the cognitive ability of – of limp lettuce.’

‘Generous mammaries don’t necessarily mean she’s a bimbo,’ he said defensively, stroking my thighs.