Racking up the years

Racking up the years
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West Magazine
Published Saturday February 23, 2013

My first bra came from Jayne Mansfield’s closet. At least it felt like it did. It was pale pink satin and doubled as a bullet-proof vest. The label said ‘Action’ bra but that was the last thing I was going to get in it. The hooks at the back were large enough to catch herring, there was not a skerrick of elastic for comfort and I needed to be Houdini to get in or out of it. Houdini, or a locksmith.

That bra came from the bottom of mum’s drawer of antiquity and I’m pretty sure the cups hadn’t seen breasts since 1953. But I was 13 and desperate. It was Thursday night, there was school on Friday and late night shopping hadn’t been invented. My breasts and I could not face another round of heckling from the leering boys who hung on the fence watching our school softball.

That afternoon, my bra-less dash round the bases clinched the game – but my breasts must have sailed over the home plate before I did, because those boys started cheering: ‘Hey yer headlights ‘r on! Yer blinding us with yer high beams!’

I was deflated. And humiliated. So that night, mum dug through her cupboard and unearthed her heirloom bra. I thought I was going to be swallowed in it, but if it kept my particulars under wraps, I was prepared to wear it. And so began a complicated relationship with my breasts.

For 30 years, I have re-played that bra-less home run as my Bo Derek moment. Me: nubile gazelle-woman, running in slow motion, nothing jiggling, just a gentle swaying up front, spectators mesmerised. That was until I took up jogging last year and the man of the house watched me stumble in through the gate: ‘Hey blossom, Dudley Moore would have been proud of that running style. Even sober.’

Having worn a bra since 1980, I’ve grown accustomed to constriction. (Breasts that don’t move are my objective now.) But women are never happy with what they’ve got. Breasts are always too small, too pointy, too cumbersome or just too big: those boobs so outspoken they take all the male attention off your face: ‘Hey soldier – eyes up and front!’

Why are men still fixated on breasts when half the population has them? And why are there so many names for them? In the 50’s there are photos of my mum in bras so pointy they could take your eye out: “Look at the lungs on that sheila!”. By the 60’s bosoms were ‘Bristol cities’ and winging it freestyle. In the 70’s,  ‘A Clockwork Orange’ called them ‘Groodies’ and then foxy mammas went disco: ‘Check out the rack on that chick!’ In 1982, Jane Fonda dressed her Pointer Sisters in lycra and aerobics took over the gym. By the time I was at school we were comparing ‘hooters’ and girls with ‘bodacious ta-ta’s’ were flaunting their assets every chance they got.   

Now I notice two types of women: those who dress for the breast and those who don’t – women are either offence or defence. Some breasts are so properly controlled they’re standoffish. Others aren’t shy enough – they’re in your face everywhere  – spilling out of the waitress’ uniform as she takes your order, or blindsiding you in the supermarket aisle.

I pity men confronted with a pair of barely contained breasts. Cleavage a woman can hide her keys in is like a car crash – no man can look away. I can’t either.

Fashionable women disguise their breasts in wonder-bras and push-ups, minimisers, firmers and separaters. Breasts can be made to look bigger, higher, friskier. It’s not until we get them home that they can really be themselves and relax. (Some relax better than others.)

The breast connoisseur I live with says bosoms quicken his pulse. That’s because until he’s allowed to unwrap them, he doesn’t know what he’s going to get: ‘I’ve never been disappointed. I’m just thrilled to see them in the wild at all.’

My breasts have served me well. They’ve done their hard work putting fat cheeks on three babies,they’ve not complained about getting up in the middle of the night or the endless dawn starts.

For that, breasts deserve some respect. Good manners dictate men don’t ogle women whose breasts are feeding babies. Or breasts that fall out of bathers while their owner gets dumped in the City Beach surf.

Maybe my breasts need to reclaim their charisma. Now I’ve finished with the business of procreation and my breasts can go back to being just for fun, I  have to juggle them into support mechanisms because they’re tired and can’t stay up late anymore.

Sometimes the sight of an impossibly pert pair of breasts makes me pine for those days when I didn’t realise how good mine were. Breasts start out in life as star-gazers and end up as path-finders, but all breasts get their quality time. I’m okay with what I’ve got. I think we’ve finally got the hang of each other.

The Sounds of Silence

The Sounds of Silence
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West Magazine
Published Saturday February 16, 2013

When was the last time you heard silence? Not the soothing emptiness of the countryside, with its carolling magpies and leaf rustling breezes, but the complete absence of sound?

I’ve experienced true silence just the once, suspended in the watery blackness of a float tank in Sydney. Climbing naked into an isolation chamber with nothing for company but lukewarm salty water is an exercise in sensory deprivation. 

It was a gag – a gift voucher from my Mum wanting to slow me down. I was only 30, but I still remember the mesmerising stillness that sent my brain darting about in bewilderment, straining for input. (There are only two choices in the confines of a float tank: give in to the nothingness, or have an anxiety attack.) I could repress the urge to panic knowing I could escape the tank, but emptying my head of noisy thought was the biggest challenge. Concentrating on the sensations of breathing loosened my grip on time and I emerged an hour later in a state of dreamy calm.

I’ve never again come that close to silence. I’ve tried to find it lying in the yellow stubble of the furthest paddock at the family farm, but the pulsating chorus of cicadas became intrusive, underscored by the thundering of a road train from across the valley. Last October, being laid out on the white slab of a medical imaging suite became the best manufactured silence of the year. I needed a 45 minute bone scan on my foot. Forbidden to move a muscle, I drifted into a trance, spellbound by the gentle purring of the machine. If not for the $500 bill, I’d be tempted to book in again – just for the afternoon nap.

Silence and modern life now seem incompatible. There is supposedly not a single place in Europe where you can sit still for 15 minutes during daylight and escape the noises of mankind. That’s quite an assertion. Whether the truth or exaggeration, we humans have burdened the planet with the incessant racket of our machines.

As I write, it’s night-time and I am sitting at my desk with the sash windows open. The kids are out to it after a late swim at the beach. Their father is in Manila on business. (When people ask what he does up there, I say: ‘He collects folders.’)

It’s tranquil, but still saturated with sound. If I tune my ears, I can hear the faint whirring of the ceiling fan in the kitchen creating an evening breeze. There is a glee club of frogs in the garden celebrating Retic Day. My fingers do a sibilant dance over the keyboard.  A car turns out of our street and revs into high gear. Someone laughs next door. With my eyes closed I can detect the low drone of the fridge and a pulsating sensation in my head. A wave of relaxation washes over me, replacing the effort of listening.

I spend much of my time living outside of myself. If I’m not moderating the squabbles between my children, or trying to have three conversations at once, I’m straining to hear the TV news as I bang about in the kitchen cooking dinner. A dozen things always demand my ears. Even when my body is still, I continue to cartwheel round the inside of my head: racing ahead to tomorrow’s conundrums or fretting over yesterday’s. I’ve heard it called ‘the storm of inward thought.’ I’d prefer to be becalmed.

My favourite time is those minutes before I fall asleep, when the house is  softly breathing, and I’m alone with my thoughts. I bring them before the Bench to be counselled, deliberated and settled, and then I wind down in the deep quiet.

Remember the silence of the classroom when you were at high school? Me neither. But I do recall brief lulls in the chatter when we kids finally knuckled down and the only sound was the scratch of biros on paper. It was stimulated silence: minds on the stretch, neurons firing. (Or, in my case, neurons scattering in confusion during maths.)

Silence is satisfying. Advancing age has given my mum an intolerance for the bedlam of my house. When three kids are banging doors, shrieking and galloping around their nanna, and the thumping music on eldest son’s radio is competing with our conversation, I can see her becoming agitated.

Before long, she’s kissing the kids and searching for her car keys to escape my noisy world. One child at a time is my answer for mum, especially with a two year old who has only two volumes – shouting and yelling.

I’ve made it my goal this year to seek more silence. I need some tranquilising. While my toddler is napping, I’ll try to create a mind-space so soft and still I’ll be able to hear a pin drop. With cork floors here, that should be quite the challenge.

In the Passion Pit

In the Passion Pit
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West Magazine
Published February 9, 2013

Power is still the best aphrodisiac. That’s why I get all atingle at the sight of my husband brandishing an electric drill or a whipper snipper. The mere suggestion that he has forsaken the cricket, the newspaper and his children to do a job that lessens my domestic load is guaranteed to earn him an afternoon delight. And I don’t mean a visit from my mother.

Sometimes I fantasise about my bloke leaning over the kitchen sink. I like to imagine him up to his elbows in suds teaching that saucepan with the scrambled eggs burnt into it a lesson in brute force.

I can also get steamed up watching him iron a shirt. He likes to do his ironing after a shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. I’m always captivated by the way he moves from cuff to collar instead of the other way around, though really I’m just excited that it’s not me taking the creases out. Just once, I wish the towel would drop to the floor. Instead, his belly works against gravity to keep it firmly in place. (Ironing has always been a wrinkle up the sleeve of fun.)

Foreplay in a marriage is a dance of many complicated steps. It’s not like the  hokey-pokey we did in our single days. Back then, shaking it about after a couple of shandies at the pub was all it took to get propositioned. Now, in a long-term partnership over-run with children’s swimming lessons and endless cut lunches, the matrimonial polka comes a sad second to wakeful toddlers and 12 year olds who can stay up later than I can. Even when the kids are finally asleep, I find it difficult to read the signals coming from the man on the sofa. If he’s engrossed in the latest Economist magazine, I never know if my fortunes are looking up, or if Greece has killed off any hope of a stimulation package: Mine.  

A girlfriend says her husband needs to understand that foreplay starts three hours before bed-time. For her, it involves curling up on the sofa with him while they watch Stephen Fry on QI. During the show, she likes to talk about subjects that have been troubling her during the day. Vexatious questions like whether the dripping laundry tap might fix itself. After that, my girlfriend likes some hand-holding (her hand being held) or foot massaging (her feet being massaged) while they watch re-runs of his favourite show The Sopranos, and she asks him repeatedly whose hit-man is whose. Maybe he gets up to make them both a cup of tea because ‘togetherness’ is all about connecting in ways that make her the centre of (his) attention’.

If he’s perfectly content watching a mob hit without her, having baggsed the comfy arm of the sofa after leaving the dishes for the maid, then she’s not hitting the sack with him later on. Any hopes he has of making faces with her at 10pm sink faster than a Mafia victim in New Jersey habour.

I’m going to make an educated guess here and say most blokes don’t need foreplay. In fact, I’ll take a stab in the dark and say that leaving a man in peace in front of the telly is foreplay in itself. In our house, I have learnt the Golden Rule of obtaining amorous congress: Silence. Sometimes I give myself an extra challenge and see if I can remain mute even during the ad breaks. (No success yet.)

The only trouble with pandering to my man’s love of quiet is that some nights I have no idea where I stand. He might be a prized stud, but occasionally, I like to imagine I am queen of the Stepford wives and can expect certain reward for my verbal restraint, only to discover that while I was loading the dishwasher he has hit the hay and any pleadings for a roll in it are met with: “Go to sleep please Blossom, I have a 7am meeting.” (Business and pleasure are mutually exclusive in our house.)

As far as I can tell, men don’t talk with other men about their sex lives. If they did they’d have worked out that women like to use sex as a reward for good behaviour. A husband who takes the kids out and leaves me in my house alone for an afternoon is in for some conjugal happiness. On the other hand, any husbands who take the rubbish out then act as though they’ve cleaned both toilets are likely to be going to bed alone.

Men should talk more to each other – that’s what the phone is for. Commiserating with mates over the mysteries of the female libido might unravel why it blows cold even after you’ve taken the bins out. Women, of course, are enlightened about what men want because they discreetly share the details for the greater good of womankind. These are the kind of private conversations best saved for fifteen of your besties at book  club.

If men had book clubs they’d have all the answers. Instead they’re doomed to pub get-togethers where the talk rarely ventures outside the cricket or the nags until some bloke, half-polluted, asks wistfully: “You know that look women get when they want sex? Me neither.”

Chewing the Fat

Chewing the Fat
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West Magazine
Published February 2, 2013

A few weekends back a girlfriend and I were at the beach for our first swim of the summer. It was an overcast morning and the water looked dark. We were trying to stave off the inevitable shock of cold water by discussing our chances of getting eaten by a shark. She turned to me and said: “Any self-respecting shark would take one look at me and say: Geez, I’m not that hungry.”

A real friend doesn’t lie about her weight. A real friend understands that a woman’s weight can be central to her mood: thin = happy, not thin = grumpy. My bathroom scales are an electronic slab of nastiness hell-bent on destroying my morning.

A nutritionist once told me: ”Do not weigh yourself every day, it’s bad for your mental health.” But most mornings, I roll out of bed, skip to the loo and then step daintily onto my scales. It takes about three seconds for them to calculate how many squares of cooking chocolate I had the night before and deliver up the numbers that have me inwardly cursing (and outwardly cranky) for the next half hour.

If the figure is really offensive, I move the scales around the bathroom floor, hoping a second (or third) try will give me a more considerate read-out. Sometimes I hold onto the door frame and voila! I weigh the same as I did when I was 18. Self delusion makes me thin.

When I ring a girlfriend to say: “Good morning, I am a circus tent” she doesn’t reply: ‘Hey, I’ve lost three kilos and I’m back to what I weighed on my wedding day.” Instead she sympathises: ”I weigh the same as the day I gave birth to my third child.”

My Adonis does not realise that all nearly all women obsess about their weight, usually to their partner’s detriment. (The fatter we feel, the thinner our libido.)

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not so shallow that our weight is all we care about. We have discussed at length our disappointment that even the head of the CIA can’t have an affair without getting caught. We worry Julia Gillard was talked into becoming a redhead by her hairdresser boyfriend. And then we go back to our weight, because society demands that the female of our species should always be pert and thin. Any woman who has had children or is within fifteen years of menopause knows pert requires surgery and pert andthin is a pipe dream.

I have two lovely pals who meet with me every Friday morning. Our husbands think it’s a weekly discussion to exchange housekeeping tips, and how to serve up more marital happiness. But really those girlfriends come to my house to find out what the scales of injustice say. Having starved ourselves all morning for ‘weigh-in,’ the more sensible one of us records the offensive number of kilos in her diary. Then we put the bad news behind us and get down to the more important business of tea and cake.

I wouldn’t miss those Fridays for quids. They began five years ago when we decided one of us might need a weekly catch-up to help her endure the horrors of chemotherapy. (We didn’t need to weigh her to know she was thin.)

Since then there has been a wonderful survival story, one last baby, two husbands’ vasectomies, two new places to live, one new career and several sets of hateful scales. Cancer free and in perfect nick, the most disciplined of our threesome now sympathises with the two of us whose blasted weight has stayed more or less the same, always five kilos too many.

We still de-brief every Friday, except now we use ‘weigh-in’ as an excuse to check up on each other and restore some girly equilibrium.

What Friday weigh-ins are good for is motivation. The three of us come away hardened with steelier resolve to be Elle McPherson pure about what we eat. (Usually sabotaged by Troy Buswell self-control.) On occasion our iron will has lasted a whole week – the record is three months -but usually we’re texting each other by Friday night: “Do organic brownies count?” (Apparently, if they came from the health food shop, they have no calories.)

For me, trying to lose weight at this time of year is hopeless. And pointless. There are too many good things to eat. So I’m going to move those scales around the house until I find that elusive G-spot  – G for gravity. That’s the spot where a slight incline confuses the scale’s pea-sized brain into thinking I’m three kilos lighter. I have high hopes for that bit of the kitchen floor that dips as it merges with the pantry. If my plan fails, I’ll just use the stupid scales as a step-up to reach the top shelf. I’m sure that’s where I hid the last of the cooking chocolate.