Desperate Husbands (3 page)

It’s three in the morning and I’m considering purchase of the BodyFirm ToningSystem—a complete exercise regime which does not require you to leave your couch. The BodyFirm—according to the TV ad—consists of a series of electrical pads which you place strategically about your body. These send small electrical shocks into your muscles causing them to flex with an involuntary spasm.
Voilà.
Constant and slimming exercise, all achieved while you are simultaneously eating chips and drinking beer. In the wider community, I believe they call this multi-tasking.

Even better, if you use your credit card and ring NOW NOW NOW, they send you the BodyShape belt—a sort of elasticised strap that vibrates whenever you stop sucking in your belly.

Have you noticed how some men always have their chests puffed out and their stomachs held in? Until now I’d thought
they were merely pompous gits, but—a revelation—under that suit there’s a vibrating girdle. I’d like to buy one—designed to hold everything in place under whatever enormous pressure. After all, I already own a pair of Levi 501s, in size thirty-six, which is operating in much the same way.

I focus back on the TV. The next advertisement offers a system of tapes through which I can learn various things WHILE ASLEEP. It makes me wonder: what if I purchased both products and left them connected all night? I could go to bed a fat, ignorant drunk, and wake up thin, gorgeous and with a working knowledge of German.
Sehr gut!

Hope springs eternal at three in the morning, but questions do arise. I spot an advertisement for scissors, but why, exactly, would I want a pair of scissors so strong that I can cut through a pair of men’s shoes? The picture shows a woman armed with the scissors. She cuts through paper, then a cardboard box, then picks up a pair of men’s shoes and briskly slices off the toes. She smiles sweetly at the ease with which the task is achieved. Why does she do this? Has she caught him, the bastard who owns these shoes, sweaty and red-faced, with a twenty-year-old accounts manager perched naked on his knee? Has he stopped wearing his BodyShape girdle, and this is his wake-up call? Has he been learning Swahili at night just to annoy her? Or is she merely barking mad?

On late-night TV, conspicuous consumption has given way to
ridiculous
consumption: the purchase of goods so useless they’ll need to be either hidden away or thrown away. There’s the Hot Dog Maker which, completely unlike a saucepan, can heat hot dogs. There’s the Bench-Top Pizza-Maker which, completely unlike an oven, can make a pizza.
And there’s even a prawn shell remover which, completely unlike your fingers, can shell a prawn. Each device, the advertisers claim, is a significant advance on whatever preceded it. Indeed, hearing their claims, it is uncertain how the human race survived up to this point.

Here, for instance, is the sales pitch for the Electric Omelette Station which, completely unlike a frypan, can cook an omelette: ‘Who knew frying eggs could be such a wonderfully indulgent activity?’ begins the advertisement. ‘Introducing the five gorgeous pieces of Electric Starr’s Electric Omelette Station, designed to impress you as well as every admirer who will suddenly become interested in the art of cooking.’

A picture forms of a gaggle of people surrounding the chef, jostling to have a turn, so excited are they by the Electric Omelette Station. ‘Please let me have a turn, Mum,’ whines one teenage girl, as she elbows a transfixed grandfather out of the way. A sullen thirteen-year-old boy thumps aside his mesmerised aunt: ‘I don’t know what has come over me,’ says the boy. ‘Suddenly I have an all-consuming urge to cook.’

No doubt the explanation lies in the further description of the product: the electric double-burner unit features non-stick die-cast construction, on/off indicator lights, and what is described as ‘a chrome finish with 24K gold-plated accents’.

Up to now I thought ‘a gold-plated accent’ referred to a Toorak matron bunging on a posh voice, but I now see I was mistaken. You can imagine the sort of praise the inventor must have received around the office. It takes some effort to replace a single frypan with a five-piece set—and yet still achieve the same omelette sitting on the same plate.

I make a cup of coffee and return in time for another set of ads—all of them for hair removal products. How can that be? Is Australia’s problem with unwanted hair bigger than I’d imagined? Or is it the time of day that’s to blame, with advertisements aimed at the after-midnight werewolf market?

I recall that a good friend of mine once purchased one of these TV offers: the SoftPluck, a hair removal system in which each hair is removed so gently ‘you’ll hardly notice’. This, according to my friend, was code for ‘brutally wrench out each hair in turn until your eyes are streaming, and the air is rendered thick with the sound of wailing’. Which I guess is not quite as effective a sales pitch.

Certainly, a picture is forming of my fellow viewers: hairy people with memory loss problems. The MassiveMemory ad has been on about five times, the phone number flashing for minutes at a time. I wonder if they ever sell anything. Either you can remember the number and thus don’t need the product. Or you need it, but haven’t the foggiest who to call.

The weirdest thing is how so many products seem expressly designed for me. The SupaMop is ‘especially for people who want a beautifully clean house without all that scrubbing’. That’s me! I wonder how they knew. Meanwhile, the ChestFlexer is ‘specifically designed for those who want to achieve the perfect body’. That sentiment is entirely mine. Frankly, it’s spooky. All those who wish to achieve only moderately OK bodies, while they scrub away at their filthy surfaces, can step aside.

I start thinking about my credit card. I could make the call NOW NOW NOW. But—even without the help of MassiveMemory—thoughts of past purchases come floating
back. Thoughts of products such as the FireMaker—a metal box into which one pressed wet newspaper thus producing compressed-paper bricks which were guaranteed to ‘produce fuel for your fire which will save $$$ on electrical heaters’. I remember placing that order. I remember the excitement of making my first bricks. And I remember the way they stayed wet for weeks—finally forcing me to dry each brick, prior to use, in front of a blazing electrical heater, at the cost of a huge number of $$$ on my electricity bill.

I make myself yet another cup of coffee and arrive back just in time to see a new offer from Danoz Direct. It is for an electronic letter opener which takes all the effort out of opening letters. As with the automatic prawn sheller, I suddenly realise the terrible inadequacy of my own fingers. ‘Don’t you just hate tearing important documents as you struggle to open envelopes!’ says the Danoz pitch, and straightaway I know what they mean. How often have I arrived home only to begin a half-hour tussle with the Telstra bill, a tussle which leaves the bill in shreds and me in tears, sobbing at the breakfast bar?

‘Now,’ continues Danoz, ‘thanks to the Electronic Letter Opener, your envelopes will virtually open themselves.’ I consider buying the product but am left wondering what I will do when the envelope arrives and I have no envelope opener with which to open the envelope containing the envelope opener. It’s a moment of existential angst that leaves me quite dissatisfied with late-night commercial TV.

In a fit of pique, I switch to the dying moments of SBS and immediately fall into a deep slumber. When I awake I discover I am naked, forty kilos heavier, and can speak Slovenian. Now that’s what I call high-impact television.

‘Don’t come near me with that thing,’ says Jocasta, from her side of the bed. ‘You look like a sleazy creep. It’s like a dead slug, just sitting there on your face. It makes you look disgusting.’

It’s true the moustache doesn’t suit me. For a start, it has somehow made my nose grow bigger. ‘How is that possible?’ I ask Jocasta, but she refuses to look, preferring to engage with a magazine photo essay on the actor Viggo Mortensen.

On a beach holiday, the normal order must be overturned. Women who usually don’t give a damn about bikini waxing and nail polish are suddenly mad for it. Men who’ve spent the year meekly pruning and defoliating let their beards go wild.

It’s like dress-up time for grown-ups. And so I’ve got the mo. It begins under the shower, halfway through shaving off a week’s growth. ‘I could stop right here and have a mo,’ I think to myself, and there seems no reason not to. These are the
liberations of the Australian beach holiday. You can slough off your workaday self at the same time you slough off your clothes. In a pair of sluggos, you could be anybody. For instance, the sort of guy who has a mo.

‘What sort of guy has a mo?’ I ask Jocasta, as she hovers with her magazine, chanting the word ‘Viggo’ in the hypnotic manner of a Sufi priest. ‘A sleazy, creepy guy,’ says Jocasta distractedly, as she turns the magazine to better appreciate another shot of Viggo.

I don’t think she’s right. As a mustachioed man, I think I’d be more decisive, more manly, stricter with myself and with the world. I’d probably drink less and be able to play sport. The question is: is it worth gaining all of the above if I also get a bigger nose?

‘Do you think my nose has actually grown bigger or does it just look bigger?’ I ask Jocasta, but she doesn’t seem to hear me.

‘What colour of nail polish do you think Viggo would like on a woman?’ is all she says, rocking her magazine from side to side to better appreciate the effect of sunlight on the actor’s skin.

‘Pink,’ I suggest. ‘An actor would love something theatrical.’ I’m hoping an answer from me might garner one from her; a tactic which fails to work. ‘He’s not just an actor, you know,’ says Jocasta. ‘He’s also a poet, a horseman, and he speaks ten languages.’

The next day we’re playing beach cricket. Jocasta is bowling, wearing bright pink nail polish on her toes. She’s never worn nail polish in her life but such are the transformations of the beach. Our mate Neil whacks the ball hard, on a fast, low trajectory. I stretch to the left, wondering
whether I’ll miss the ball entirely as usual or instead catch it, fumble for a while, and then drop it. I look down to check the manner of my disgrace only to find the ball nestled sweetly in my hand. In a summer of sporting firsts, here’s another. I’ve caught a cricket ball. The moustache has more power than I thought.

During the 1970s, I spent most of my leisure time trying to summon up a single chest hair on my otherwise hairless torso. I’d brace my body, shut my eyes, hold my breath and squeeze. Under this sort of pressure the usual result was an explosive fart, together with the odd ruptured pimple. But the hoped-for hair never put in an appearance.

Hair seemed to be some sort of code for masculinity. On TV, cricketers like Dennis Lillee mocked me with their ever-larger moustaches. Schoolmates would undo successive shirt buttons to reveal gorilla-like thatches. There was so much pure manliness knotted inside the bodies of my compatriots, it just kept bursting out—that seemed to be the unstated message. ‘Mate, every time I have a shower, more of it grows; I just can’t help myself’—
that
seemed to be what they were saying.

As a teenager whose main interests were theatre and the odd book, I needed all the masculinity I could get. Desperate, I considered pasting onto my chest a poultice of Dynamic Lifter; or, at last resort, the purchase of a chest wig. The chest wig I rejected due to the cost; the Dynamic Lifter due to the quite incredible smell.

As the seventies wore on, the hair on every bloke’s head became progressively longer and less restrained. Some attempted sideburns, beards, even mutton chops. Chest hair, if it could be summoned up, was proudly displayed—
framed in the V-for-victory of a partially unbuttoned body shirt. Women, too, threw away their blades and let hair joyfully sprout from their legs and underarms. With every year that passed, the country became hairier. By 1976, it appeared the nation would soon resemble Cousin It from
The Addams Family
, with severe consequences for road safety.

Finally, through dint of effort, some time around my early twenties I achieved a small fuzz on the upper lip and just enough chest hairs to award them individual names. (‘Hi Trevor’, ‘Hi Douglas’, ‘Hi Angelique’.) And now, years on, right at the end of the summer holidays, I have finally graduated to the mo—and with it the yearned-for masculinity.

Some strangers wander up and join our cricket game. They must think of me as a mustachioed man, and of Jocasta as a woman who habitually wears pink nail polish. I find this strangely appealing. One of the newcomers takes up the bat and hooks the ball skywards. It arcs up high, sits for a moment and then heads down towards me. There’s an eternity in which to position myself and contemplate the catch. For me, this signals disaster: the more time I have to think about a catch, the more time my mind has to catalogue all the ways in which I’ll drop it.

As the ball falls, I remember the time when I was the assistant coach of Batboy’s baseball team. Steve, the coach, would put me on first base and try to teach the boys the rules of the game. ‘The batter,’ he’d explain, ‘runs towards first base, and at the same I throw the ball—really fast and hard—towards Richard like this…’

There’d be a pause as they all watched the ball travel towards me.

‘Yeah, OK, well let’s just imagine he caught it,’ Steve would say, brightly. ‘If he’d caught it, that runner would then be out.’

Back at the beach, I can feel everyone watching me. Never before has a ball moved so slowly; so precisely towards a waiting fielder. It must be the easiest catch in the history of beach cricket. I scrunch up my eyes, jerk my arms into the air and feel the ball drop perfectly into my hands. ‘Great catch,’ someone yells. I breathe out, and give the moustache an appreciative rub. The thicker the mo gets, the more my play resembles that of a young Dennis Lillee.

‘I think it’s changed your personality,’ says Jocasta that night, as she changes her nail polish colour to an electric sapphire blue. ‘What happened to the man I shacked up with—incompetent, self-pitying, hopeless at games and unable to control his drinking? Frankly, I’d got used to that guy.’

Maybe she has a point. What sort of guy has a moustache? Not a guy like me. The mo has to go. So does her nail polish, and the magazine with Viggo. The next morning, the last day of our holidays, I shave the thing off. Almost instantly, my nose returns to its normal size. We have a final game of beach cricket with Jocasta bowling, her toes reassuringly unadorned. I take the bat, miss her first three balls, and get clean-bowled on the fourth.

The holidays are over; and so is the new me.