Desperate Husbands (11 page)

Teenage boys are becoming anxious about their appearance, much like teenage girls. About eighty per cent of the boys in a new survey described themselves as unhappy with how they looked. At fifteen, they are spending $60 a month on hair and skin products. A quarter of them would like to have cosmetic surgery.

All this, I think, is a great shame. There are plenty of things that men can learn from women. How to pop a toilet roll onto the toilet-roll holder is just one example. But body image obsession is not one of them. Let me whisper to young men the secret of the tribe; the secret that has been passed from one generation of men to the next: we’re just gorgeous, each and every one of us.

Next time you’re at the beach have a good look around. There will be some gnarled old bloke striding along, massive beer gut held proudly in front of him, rather like
the bow of a majestic sailing ship, his bald head pitted with skin cancers, his spindly legs buckling under his massive weight, his pair of budgie-smugglers sagging limply around his tiny and frozen member. And yet something about his gait reveals what he’s thinking: ‘My God, I’m a fine figure of a man.’

Yes, he’s insane. But he’s happy.

Meanwhile, coming the other way, will be the most beautiful woman, conventionally perfect in every way, but thinking to herself: ‘I bet everyone’s staring at my puffy ankles. How did they get so huge?’

She, too, is insane—unhappily so.

Why the difference? Why, when men get old and weatherbeaten, do they get called ‘distinguished’, while when women get old and weatherbeaten they get called ‘old and weatherbeaten’? Why do men do year-long courses in Buddhism in an attempt to dissolve their ego, while women can achieve the same result in a three-minute tussle with a size ten dress in the change room at Target?

And why at the gym do the eyes of the men flick to their own best bit, staring lovingly at the one or two muscles they’ve managed to build, while the eyes of the women flick impulsively towards their one supposed imperfection?

Consider the matter of baldness. Who but a man would come up with the explanation that baldness is a sign of virility? ‘Oh yes,’ he’ll say, running a hand through thinning hair, ‘I’ve just got too much testosterone coursing through my system. I guess I’ve got more sex drive than other men.’ As unlikely as this explanation seems, balding men have managed to convince the world it is a ridgy-didge scientific orthodoxy. Put the words ‘bald’ and ‘sexy’ into Google and
you’ll get 840,000 matches, kicking off with a website offering testimonials from women on the allure of bald men, ‘Men of Perfection’ T-shirts and a flashing message: ‘I’m too sexy for my hair.’

If women commonly went bald, would they claim it as a good thing, offering it as proof of excess oestrogen? Would they start up websites and testimonial logs, and purchase ‘Woman of Perfection’ T-shirts?

Take the example of varicose veins. If women behaved like balding men, they’d claim varicose veins as a symbol of fertility. ‘Oh, yes,’ the woman would say, ‘you get them in the later stages of pregnancy.’ Here she would delicately unfold her legs and trace the throbbing purple lines with an outstretched finger. She would pause and flutter her eyelids: ‘And, as you can see, I’ve fallen pregnant quite a few times.’

Again the point is not to mock the bald-headed men: they’re the ones with the good attitude; they are the example we should all be following.

Certainly, it’s difficult to imagine how these young men are spending $60 a month on grooming products. When I was their age, things were different—even when preparing for a night on the town. In terms of skin care, I’d get a handful of sugar, add it to some soapy foam and create my own abrasive face scrub. A firm hand would simply sandpaper away those troublesome pimples, leaving a bleeding and red-raw surface that singled me out in any crowd.

As for hair care, one rarely needed to purchase product. Far better to simply not wash one’s hair for a given period. A week of not washing in order to achieve the David Bowie spiky look; a month and a half for the full-Elvis quiff.

‘Ego,’ as the band Skyhooks put it at about this time, ‘is not a dirty word.’ Today’s generation of young men would be wise to remember it. And, hopefully, one day the girls will follow their wise lead.

I know I’m gorgeous. But so, you know, are you.

I remember the panic I’d feel when I was fifteen or sixteen: I’d walk into a party, spotting the mix of strangers and school friends. It was a sort of nameless dread, a mix of apprehension, shame, fear and desperate hope. Now, thirty years on, I walk into a party and still suffer nameless dread, but now it is literally so. This time round I can’t remember anyone’s name. Jocasta hovers by my side, like an old man’s nurse, topping up my supplies as we go. ‘That young guy is your son’s soccer coach,’ she whispers out of the side of her mouth. ‘That woman in the corner is our dentist. That older lady coming towards us with her arms outspread, that’s your mother.’

It’s all very helpful. Within minutes my nameless dread starts to lift.

Then there’s someone even Jocasta doesn’t recognise. I smile and try to act friendly. I seem to know her
really
well,
which may mean she was my girlfriend for all the years between sixteen and twenty-one or that she’s the local vet. Do I kiss her on the cheek or shake her hand? Luckily, I’ve become expert at asking open-ended questions.

‘How are you?’

‘Fine. I hope your dog’s recovered.’

I thank my lucky stars I didn’t go for the kiss and quick grope. Quite acceptable with the ex, but enough to get you arrested with the local vet.

Of course, it’s worse when you are meeting someone new. My problem is that I want to act friendly, remembering to smile, shake their hand politely and really look them in the eyes. Being vaguely human in this manner is clearly a big challenge, requiring 100 per cent of my concentration, since I inevitably walk away with no memory of their name. It could be Rumpelstiltskin for all I know.

Again I’m forced to employ certain stratagems.

‘I might just grab your phone number. First, how do you spell your surname?’

‘What? Smith?’

‘Sorry, I meant your first name. I was having trouble with it.’

‘What? Simon?’

By this time they think you are a little dim in the spelling department but perfectly friendly. A sort of jolly idiot.

Once you’ve captured their name, it’s important to commit it to memory. A salesman I knew—sorry, I can’t quite recall his name—favoured the technique of immediately repeating the name back to the person who’s just supplied it.

‘Well, Simon, I guess that’s right, Simon, I can see what you mean, Simon.’ This is fine, as long as their name is not
Auberon, Tristan or Kimberly-Sue, in which case they might think you’re taking the mick.

Far better to develop a mental note. The guy with blond hair is John, so we repeat the sequence until it’s locked in: ‘blond’ equals ‘surfer’ equals ‘John’. Thus: ‘Surfer John, Surfer John, Surfer John’. Depending on the identifying characteristic you choose, this method can deliver instant name recognition and solve all your social problems—or cause you to stride towards acquaintances with a welcoming smile, saying, ‘Well, if it’s not old Fatty Steve.’

But if I’m bad with names, I’m worse with numbers. I feel I’ve been asked to remember one PIN too many, as a result of which, I now cannot remember any at all.

It started with bank PINs some time in the early eighties. We were all given a four-digit number. Having used mine for twenty years, I now find myself—on the odd occasion—able to remember it. But these days it has competition. I have a four-digit PIN to play back my voicemail, and another one to make interstate phone calls. The valuables at work are stored in a cupboard with a three-digit code. Both my local video stores want a password. And the office computer wants a mix of letters and numbers, which it forces me to change every month. At the same time, there’s a car park near work with six floors, each colour coded.

I begin each day mumbling as I walk, trying to commit it all to memory. I’m parked on Green 4. My phone PIN is 7338. My voicemail is 1803. The speed dial prefix is 82. And the names of my children will come to me if you just give me a minute.

There are other numbers. The car rego. My date of birth. The question of whether my younger boy is in Year 7 or 8. you must remember this
I’m also keen to stay in touch with the fact that the Eureka Stockade occurred in 1854. It’s the single fact I remember from six years of secondary schooling and so we have a sentimental attachment.

As with people’s names at a party, I end up devising complex mnemonics. My phone PIN, for instance, is easy. Each time I want to make an interstate call, I simply imagine one of the two 3s in the middle was turned around and faced the other. This would make them look like an 8, which—by freakish chance—is the last number. Which is one more than the 7 at the beginning. I dial the PIN, repeating my mnemonic, the mirror image 3s pulsing before my eyes, and sigh with relief when I hear the number ringing. What a shame I can no longer remember who it was I dialled.

And so I attempt other methods. The floor of the car park is the same number as my child’s class at school. My bank PIN is the same as the date of the Eureka Stockade, just backwards. Except for the middle numbers which, looked at right, remind me of two fat men dancing.

By the end of the day, my brain clanks as I walk. I’m pretty sure the Eureka Stockade happened in 1833 and my son is in class Green 8. My car must be parked on Oxford Street, as I’m sure I remember something about gay men dancing. I pause before the locked stationery cupboard. Is this the PIN which has something to do with the Eureka Stockade or is this the one connected to the fat men dancing? And if so, are the fat men dancing back to back (two 3s)? Or face to face (two 8s)? Or has each fat man now scored a thin partner (two 10s)?

I decide I can live without stationery. And without interstate phone calls. And who needs a computer? But at
lunchtime there’s no choice. My wallet is empty. I stand in front of the bank’s cash machine, a queue steadily forming behind me. I attempt one number. And then another. There is muttering. ‘What’s he doing?’ I hear someone say, and a blush of shame creeps onto my face. I’m PIN-numerate.

Sometime this week you’ll be behind one of us. In the bank queue. At the video store. In the supermarket checkout. You’ll think we are slow or mad or difficult. But no, we’ll just be trying to remember our PIN and perhaps our own name. Have sympathy for our nameless, numberless dread. We’ve been asked to remember just one thing too many.

Only eighteen months ago the phrase ‘24/7’ was in all the best places. Walk through the funkier clubs in New York or Paris, and you could always overhear someone mentioning ‘24/7’. It was the hip new nickname for ‘twenty-four hours, seven days a week,’ and everybody wanted to share a little of 24/7’s limelight.

‘I listen to music 24/7’, they’d say. Or ‘I like to work and play 24/7.’ Or even ‘Our company will deliver 24/7.’ One minute you’d see 24/7 in a newspaper headline, the next on the lips of a film star. It was like a whirlwind. Everyone wanted a piece of 24/7. Yet in the midst of the adulation came a warning. Someone, 24/7 can’t remember who, told the story of the phrase ‘As-You-Do’.

‘Oh, yes,’ 24/7 was told. ‘As-You-Do was popular.
Really
popular. It was the way As-You-Do could fit into every situation. A chat show host would be lost for words and
instinctively he’d reach for As-You-Do. Say somebody was talking about a rock star and how he chucked up and then inhaled his own vomit. Straightaway the host could say: “As You Do,” and suddenly the audience would be laughing and cheering. The embarrassing moment would be over. No wonder As-You-Do was so in demand.

‘Almost every night, As-You-Do was on at least one of the TV chat shows—and always getting the really big laughs. Letterman, Leno, Parkinson, Rove. Sometimes all of them on a single night. Everyone loved to make use of As-You-Do.’

‘So what went wrong?’ asked 24/7, suddenly overtaken by this terrible queasy feeling.

‘As-You-Do just became too popular. Kids thought As-You-Do belonged to them. So did office workers and cab drivers. The TV hosts and beautiful people didn’t like it. They said As-You-Do was overexposed, overworked. “As-You-Do,” they said, “has become a cliché.” And, frankly, they were right.’

Listening to all this, 24/7 was choked with anxiety. To think people could be so fickle towards a fresh new phrase. Who would have thought it could be a crime to be just a little popular?

‘So where is As-You-Do now?’ asked 24/7, in a tiny, hesitant voice.

‘Who knows? The last sighting was down on the coast, south of Sydney, at a rundown caravan park. Some young kids were using As-You-Do, one after the other, but it was all in the wrong context. One would say they’d just had lunch and the other would say “As-You-Do”, which isn’t even funny. Frankly, it’s abuse.’

The knot of anxiety was tightening in 24/7’s stomach. ‘And to think,’ the informant continued, ‘As-You-Do had, at
one stage, been considered for a prominent line in
Trainspotting.
’

Panic was now engulfing 24/7. Every time there was a new 24/7 headline, or a 24/7 website or a celebrity mentioning 24/7, it was a knife in the guts. Popularity was death.

With trepidation, 24/7 started doing research, trying to find out what happened to all the hip phrases of the past, after they left the limelight. It was not pretty reading. There was the first outing of Puh-lease on
Friends.
And of Yadda-Yadda-Yadda on
Seinfeld.
And of He-LLO on
Buffy.
Hilarious! The whole audience in stiches. Funniest thing ever. Then, six months on, dropped. Dagsville to even mention them.

Or what about the phrase ‘All over town like a cheap shirt’? How everyone laughed on its first appearance. Three weeks later and it was all over town like a cheap shirt. Who’s laughing now? Nobody, thought 24/7.

In the library, 24/7 continued working 24/7 on those older phrases. Oh, to see ‘Just to the right of Genghis Khan’ on those fabulous first outings. A few quality novels. The odd West End play. How people laughed! How they applauded! Then five years on it was TV sitcoms of middling quality; to be followed by an old age hanging around local council meetings and school P&Cs, being trotted out by thin-lipped ideologues and corrupt mayors.

The story sent 24/7 into a deep depression, right at the moment the really bad news came in. The same group of kids that had abused As-You-Do had now got hold of 24/7. They were using 24/7 almost hourly. In truth, 24/7 was relieved. The anxiety had been terrible. But now it was all over. Into the bathroom staggered 24/7, swallowing a
handful of pills, chug-a-lugging a bottle of whiskey, then jumping from the tenth-floor window. As-You-Do.

Yadda-Yadda-Yadda—could someone spare some sympathy? 24/7 was only ever a phrase we were going through.