Tales from the tub - Petunia

Petunia ( and The great rubber bridge bun heist )

Utter, utter relief. Defecation used to be something Petunia winced at the thought of even discussing. Today, it was a joyful occurrence. It meant everything was alright, all her woes released from her body in one great cathartic motion.

Somewhere in her mid-30's, somehow, she came across the Bristol stool chart. It was a life changing experience. Consumed now, as she was, with the consistency, shape, color and buoyancy of her relief.

"How are you Peti?" Gladice beemed. She had been beeming since she had her dentures replaced with porcelain caps. A barbie doll's smile on the body of a gollum figurine.

"You look stupid Glady, those teeth are too big, didn't they give options?"

"I look fantastic, it took ten years off, shut up and deal."

Gladice and Petunia had been rubber bridge partners for 5 years. They met in a graveyard.

"So, your husband is dead, huh, mine too."

Gladice shrugged, "it would appear so."

"Did you like him?"

Thinking on this, "not really."

"I didn't really like mine either, sorry for your loss."

"You too."

"I always wished I had married Tim Seres."

"Me Too!!!!"

They were firm friends thereafter, bonded by the conflicting emotions. The loss of someone you love but are thoroughly sick of and their rampant lust for Tim Seres, the international king of rubber bridge.

The year was 1958, London, Tim owned the bridge scene. When Tim entered a room, heads turned, women crossed their legs and cigarettes were lit. Little did they know, when they met in a graveyard many lifetimes later, they had both been there. Vying for his attention, waiting for the privligde of playing with him. Nothing is more attractive to a woman than a man that lives on his own terms, this was Tim's philosophy.

While both women adored this man and they adored his sport, call it circumstance, call it generational, they had never lived on their own terms. Now, with their husbands beneath their feet, they were free. Now, they could live like Tim.

As it's name suggests, rubber bridge is played in rubbers. A rubber is the best of three games. Each game built on a contract and the game won by the first team to score 100 points for successful contracts. A contract is the assurance that you will produce a certain score in a hand as predicted.

Perhaps, that's why rubber bridge spoke to Petunia and Gladice. Their lives were based on contracts.

You marry me, you take care of me and I predict I will have your children. If I am successful you will take care of me and our children for the rest of our lives.

Now, with their husbands in the grave, the stakes were higher, they had new contracts to negotiate. They had been scoping out this bakery for the last three weeks. It was a block from were they met to play bridge. Each morning they would walk past and buy a pastry and a coffee. Unassuming septergenarian bridge players.

They needed money. Their husbands, while loving , had left them nothing but stretch marks, ungrateful children, piles and neurosis. They wanted more.

On their way to the regional rubber bridge tournament one summer day, they didn't show up. A win, but slightly disatisfying for their aponents, a forfeit.

As Gladdy and Peti drove towards their futures with a bun truck and $30,000 cash from the register.

Tales from the tub - Abigail (Abi)

Abigail (Abi)

Running her hands through the back of her hair, wrapping her fingers intricately and determinantly around the blond strands she gripped and she pulled,

"AAhhh," shrieking distress, even this was not enough to vent her frustrations.

Getting up she paced backwards and forwards through her flat. Abi was successful, successful by everyone's standards but her own. At 32, she had a successful legal practice, small but her own, sufficient to buy her own apartment. She had travelled the world to acquire trinkets and laboriously furnished her space to her liking. She had everything. She wanted for nothing.

Ani Defranco, over her speakers as she paced,

"I have everything I want, still I want more," sang the siren. Abi pulled harder on her hair, as if she was trying to pull subconscious thoughts out through her follicles.

"AAhhh." That one hurt. A clump of hair in her hand and it hadn't worked, she had gotten no closer to the answer she was trying to retrieve. The answer to a question that many of us ask ourselves and rarely answer honestly. "What is it I really want, how can I have everything and still want for something...?"

A baby, she thought, I'm 32, I must want a baby. no, no ,no. A new car, is that it? My old Mazda is a bit ordinary, and I can afford it. no, no, no. A holiday, I've never been to Tahiti, perhaps the answer is a holiday? no, damn it, no. A new lover, she cut herself off there, god no!

"Libiamo, libiamo ne'lieti calici
che la belleza infiora.
E la fuggevol ora s'inebrii
a volutt"

In perfect tenor through her window, through the monotony of her thoughts. Standing stock still, her body, led by her left ear, elongated towards the sound like a petal to the sun.

Rag clad, head to toe, there was this man. 'La Traviata', at the top of his lungs, passionatly, making a concert hall of an inner urban street.

Passion, she realised, that's what I need. This man has nothing but a passion, I have everything but no love for any of it.

That night Abi went to bed with a greater sense of purpose. When she woke. Nothing changed. Let's face it, this wouldn't be a realistic tale if it had. But ever after when Abi felt trapped and lost in her perfect world, she would hear 'La Traviata', drawing strength from the potential embodied in one vagrant man's passion.

Tales from the tub - Tifanee

TIFANEE

Tifanee was the antithesis of her birth name. Intended to be 'Tiffany' one of the more popular names in the early 90's, a signifier of upper class luxury, her parents were phonetic retards. To be fair they were literal retards.

Tifanee was born in 1991, daughter to Mark and Angela Redden, both of whom suffered from relative degrees of mental retardation. Mark and Angela were loving parents and loving people. That was one thing Tifanee could say for her folks, retards are nice.

Tifanee often wondered how her life would have been different if she was born like them. She wasn't. She was bright. From the age of 5, she had been her parents, parent. She prepared breakfast, let the visiting day nurse in and got herself ready for school.

"My daddy is a lawyer," she would rehearse on the bus on the way to school, "My mummy is a housewife." She had to learn that lesson the hard way first day of kindergarten when she was the only one without a professional explanation for her parents existence.

As she got older, her lies became more elaborate.

"How is your dad, Tif?"

"Oh, I wouldn't know he is still in Paris, after winning the Law institue of Victoria award he decided to take a brief sojourn. My mother is thrilled, she has had her eye on this Parisian tailor and is going to get something made, don't know what, just something, you know, a little something, something."

The lies felt so natural. But, each evening she went home, had a cup of tea with the house nurse and discussed her parents progress that day.

"Your Dad did really well today Tif, he is reading at an 8th grade level, you shoud be really proud, make him a nice dinner, yeah, he has been asking for fish fingers all afternoon."

"Fish soldiers with tomato sauce!" came a cry of agreement, glee and self-pride from her father in the living room.

Tifanee burst into tears, she couldn't stop. Somewhere between her reality, the false reality she had created and the intensity of pubescent hormones she lost it.

A warm hand on her shoulder, it was her mother. "Hush baby, your our magic Tifanee, you don't cry, even when you were a baby you didn't cry, you can do anything, you are magic, they said we would never have any babies but we had a magic one, you, can we have fish soldiers now?"

A choked smile, a kind face from the day nurse, "Yes mum, go watch TV with dad and I'll call you when its ready, ok?"

"ok, happy magic baby?" said her mother with the most angelic innocence.

"Happy magic baby, thanks mum."

Tales from the tub - Walter

Right you bastards. Boring, apparently my happiness bores you. I have been informed. Things are clearly more interesting when my life is in the toilet. Now, while I certainly can't promise to be happy indefinitely, I have a gift for fucking things up in spectacular and unique ways. I have only been happy for a little while, give a girl some time.

So, in response to the constructive criticism I received today. You asked for it. My back catalog of fictional short stories, penned in the bath. To regale you with, while I think of a way to screw my life up again : )

WALTER

"But, is it meant to be yellow, I swear they never used to be yellow," Walter surveyed his fingernails, picking dirt and shit out from under them and massaging it into his trousers, "no, I don't think it's meant to be yellow, they look flaky too, I don't think they are meant to be flaky, no."

Walter was displeased. Things weren't quite going the way he had planned. As one part of his body failed him it took all his attention, to the detriment of another, in this case his fingernails. He hadn't really even considered his previous ailment an affliction, if his penis didn't work then he no longer had to service that monstrosity of a woman he married some years earlier.

It wasn't that he was no longer interested in sex, far from it, a 25 year old posterior was always able to make his member tweak, even at it's most advanced state of circulatory deprivation. But the truth was, he didn't stand a chance. He got head spins when he took a crap.

Driving a bus for a living wasn't thrilling him either. While he enjoyed feeling big on the road , his bus was Napoleons hat. When he took it off, he wasn't so big. He had also run out of excuses. Driving a bus initially put him through school, then got his kids through school and now, well now, it was just something he did. It was never intended to be what he did.

2am and he woke in a panic. He had a bad dream. Perhaps the dream woke him, perhaps it was the guttural snoring and post orgasmic flatulence of the devil woman next to him, perhaps it was the increasing pressure of his regurgitating urinary overflow. Whatever it was. Things had to change. He wasn't going to stay here waiting for death, he was already dead.

Walter was not a man of action, he was a man of procrastination and eventual defeat. But not this time. Between 3am and 5am he planned his escape. He was going to be the man he wanted to be.

He ate breakfast at 5:30am and went for a run. His limbs burned. Coming home he showered casting a disdainful scowl at the lump of womanhood that moved only to relieve herself. He dusted off his finest suit. He got dressed and he went to work. But not his work. The work he would have had if he had stopped driving a bus 20 years before.

"I'm Walter Clarendon, Mr Whitman is expecting me," he said officiously.

"Sorry Mr Clarendon, I don't have you in his diary, did you have an appointment."

"Did I have an appointment?," raising his voice slightly, "get me in that office before I share with Mr Whitman how incompetent his PA is, I have had this appointment for 2 months, he requested that I fly in from Geneva and you have the hide to ask me..."

"Sorry Mr Clarendon, of course, take a seat, I'll free up some time, my mistake." She looked at him. This young thing looked at him, not through him, at him. He was commanding respect, his member tweaked. Brief discussion on the telephone and he was ushered in.

"Walter what are you doing here?"

"Barry, I need a fucking job."

"Walter..."

"Barry, I got you laid remember, I saved your life, save mine."

"Walter, you never finished you professional placement, I can't take you on, your too old, I have kids working for me with more qualifications and willing to work for less money, help me here buddy."

From his brief case Walter produced an antique tin, opening the lid to reveal a stack of Polaroid photographs.

"Sure Barry, I understand mate, but help me here buddy, these photos of you with an indigenous male minor, where do I leave them on my way out, how's the wife?"