Good Bones (3 page)

I
AGREE, IT’S
a hot topic. But only one? Look around, there’s a wide range. Take my own, for instance.

I get up in the morning. My topic feels like hell. I sprinkle it with water, brush parts of it, rub it with towels, powder it, add lubricant. I dump in the fuel and away goes my topic, my topical topic, my controversial topic, my capacious topic, my limping topic, my nearsighted topic, my topic with back problems, my badly behaved topic, my vulgar topic, my outrageous topic, my ageing topic, my topic that is out of the question and anyway still can’t spell, in its oversized coat and worn winter boots, scuttling along the sidewalk as if it were flesh and blood, hunting for what’s out there, an avocado, an alderman, an adjective, hungry as ever.

The basic Female Body comes with the following accessories: garter-belt, panty-girdle, crinoline, camisole, bustle, brassiere, stomacher, chemise, virgin zone, spike heels, nose-ring, veil, kid gloves, fishnet stockings, fichu, bandeau, Merry Widow, weepers, chokers, barrettes, bangles, beads, lorgnette, feather boa, basic black, compact, Lycra stretch one-piece
with modesty panel, designer peignoir, flannel nightie, lace teddy, bed, head.

The Female Body is made of transparent plastic and lights up when you plug it in. You press a button to illuminate the different systems. The Circulatory System is red, for the heart and arteries, purple for the veins; the Respiratory System is blue, the Lymphatic System is yellow, the Digestive System is green, with liver and kidneys in aqua. The nerves are done in orange and the brain is pink. The skeleton, as you might expect, is white.

The Reproductive System is optional, and can be removed. It comes with or without a miniature embryo. Parental judgement can thereby be exercised. We do not wish to frighten or offend.

He said, I won’t have one of those things in the house. It gives a young girl a false notion of beauty, not to mention anatomy. If a real woman was built like that she’d fall on her face.

She said, If we don’t let her have one like all the other girls she’ll feel singled out. It’ll become an issue. She’ll long for one and she’ll long to turn into one. Repression breeds sublimation. You know that.

He said, It’s not just the pointy plastic tits, it’s the wardrobes. The wardrobes and that stupid male doll, what’s his name, the one with the underwear glued on.

She said, Better to get it over with when she’s young. He said, All right but don’t let me see it.

She came whizzing down the stairs, thrown like a dart. She was stark naked. Her hair had been chopped off, her head was turned back to front, she was missing some toes and she’d been tattooed all over her body with purple ink, in a scrollwork design. She hit the potted azalea, trembled there for a moment like a botched angel, and fell.

He said, I guess we’re safe.

The Female Body has many uses. It’s been used as a doorknocker, a bottle-opener, as a clock with a ticking belly, as something to hold up lampshades, as a nutcracker, just squeeze the brass legs together and out comes your nut. It bears torches, lifts victorious wreaths, grows copper wings and raises aloft a ring of neon stars; whole buildings rest on its marble heads.

It sells cars, beer, shaving lotion, cigarettes, hard liquor; it sells diet plans and diamonds, and desire in tiny crystal bottles. Is this the face that launched a thousand products? You bet it is, but don’t get any funny big ideas, honey, that smile is a dime a dozen.

It does not merely sell, it is sold. Money flows into this country or that country, flies in, practically crawls in, suitful after suitful, lured by all those hairless pre-teen legs. Listen, you want to reduce the national debt, don’t you? Aren’t you patriotic? That’s the spirit. That’s my girl.

She’s a natural resource, a renewable one luckily, because those things wear out so quickly. They don’t make ’em like they used to. Shoddy goods.

One and one equals another one. Pleasure in the female is not a requirement. Pair-bonding is stronger in geese. We’re not talking about love, we’re talking about biology. That’s how we all got here, daughter.

Snails do it differently. They’re hermaphrodites, and work in threes.

Each female body contains a female brain. Handy. Makes things work. Stick pins in it and you get amazing results. Old popular songs. Short circuits. Bad dreams.

Anyway: each of these brains has two halves. They’re joined together by a thick cord; neural pathways flow from one to the other, sparkles of electric information washing to and fro. Like light on waves. Like a conversation. How does a woman know? She listens. She listens in.

The male brain, now, that’s a different matter. Only a thin connection. Space over here, time over there, music and arithmetic in their own sealed compartments. The right brain doesn’t know what the left brain is doing. Good for aiming though, for hitting the target when you pull the trigger. What’s the target? Who’s the target? Who cares? What matters is hitting it. That’s the male brain for you. Objective.

This is why men are so sad, why they feel so cut off, why they think of themselves as orphans cast adrift, footloose and stringless in the deep void. What void? she says. What are you talking about? The void of the Universe, he says, and she says Oh and looks out the window and tries to get a handle on it, but it’s no use, there’s too much going on, too many rustlings in the leaves, too many voices, so she says, Would you like a
cheese sandwich, a piece of cake, a cup of tea? And he grinds his teeth because she doesn’t understand, and wanders off, not just alone but Alone, lost in the dark, lost in the skull, searching for the other half, the twin who could complete him.

Then it comes to him: he’s lost the Female Body! Look, it shines in the gloom, far ahead, a vision of wholeness, ripeness, like a giant melon, like an apple, like a metaphor for
breast
in a bad sex novel; it shines like a balloon, like a foggy noon, a watery moon, shimmering in its egg of light.

Catch it. Put it in a pumpkin, in a high tower, in a compound, in a chamber, in a house, in a room. Quick, stick a leash on it, a lock, a chain, some pain, settle it down, so it can never get away from you again.

A
N AFFAIR WITH
Raymond Chandler, what a joy! Not because of the mangled bodies and the marinated cops and hints of eccentric sex, but because of his interest in furniture. He knew that furniture could breathe, could feel, not as we do but in a way more muffled, like the word
upholstery
, with its overtones of mustiness and dust, its bouquet of sunlight on ageing cloth or of scuffed leather on the backs and seats of sleazy office chairs. I think of his sofas, stuffed to roundness, satin-covered, pale-blue like the eyes of his cold blonde unbodied murderous women, beating very slowly, like the hearts of hibernating crocodiles; of his chaises longues, with their malicious pillows. He knew about front lawns too, and greenhouses, and the interiors of cars.

This is how our love affair would go. We would meet at a hotel, or a motel, whether expensive or cheap it wouldn’t matter. We would enter the room, lock the door, and begin to explore the furniture, fingering the curtains, running our hands along the spurious gilt frames of the pictures, over the real marble or the chipped enamel of the luxurious or tacky washroom sink, inhaling the odour of the carpets, old cigarette smoke and spilled gin and fast meaningless sex or else the rich abstract scent of the oval transparent soaps imported
from England, it wouldn’t matter to us; what would matter would be our response to the furniture, and the furniture’s response to us. Only after we had sniffed, fingered, rubbed, rolled on and absorbed the furniture of the room would we fall into each other’s arms, and onto the bed (king-sized? peach-coloured? creaky? narrow? four-posted? pioneer-quilted? lime-green chenille-covered?), ready at last to do the same things to each other.

D
EAD STUMPS
are the favourite disguises of wild animals. How often have you been roaring past in your motorboat or paddling in your canoe when you’ve seen a dead stump sticking out of the water and said to yourself,
That looks like an animal?

Just the head of course. Swimming.

And then when you came up to it, it was only a dead stump.

Don’t be deceived! Usually these objects really are animals.

Here’s what you do.

Shoot the animal, more or less between the eyes, or where you guess the eyes must be. This will kill the animal but will not cause it to shed its disguise.

The next task is getting the animal out of the water. This can be difficult, as the animal will still be holding on tenaciously with the parts of itself that look like roots. You may need a chain-saw, a lot of rope, and a powerful motor on
your boat. When you have at last managed to chop and pry the animal loose, tow it to shore, where you will have parked your car.

No blood will be visible.

Let the animal dry out a little. It will be doing a good imitation of being waterlogged and very heavy. Heave it onto the hood of your car or the roof of your van, and rope it down securely. Drive it into the city. Other hunters, with moose or bears or deer or even porcupines strapped to their own cars, will shake their heads and laugh at you, but remember: the last laugh will be yours.

When you get the animal home, butcher it in the backyard. Use the chain-saw again, and a diagram of a cow. The animal will still look like wood. But don’t be fooled.

Wrap the steaks, ribs and chops in freezer paper and put them in the freezer. If your wife questions what you are doing or makes disparaging remarks about your sanity, tell her to mind her own business. Conversely, quote from the Bible:
All flesh is grass
.

When you feel ready for a big meal of animal meat, take a steak from the freezer and heat up your charcoal or gas hibachi or your frying-pan or grill. This is the moment at which the animal will be forced to reveal its true nature! Season the steak – we like a little barbecue sauce – and toss it onto the heat.

If it remains wood, you’ve made a mistake. Bad luck! You’ve picked the one dead stump out of a thousand that is not really an animal.

Try again later.

The favourite disguise of fish is oval stones lying at the bottoms of streams.

T
HIS MONTH WE’LL
take a break from crocheted string bikinis and Leftovers Réchauffées to give our readers some tips on how to create, in their very own kitchens and rumpus rooms, an item that is both practical and decorative. It’s nice to have one of these around the house, either out on the lawn looking busy, or propped in a chair, prone or erect. Choose the coverings to match the drapes!

When worn out, they can be re-covered and used as doorstops.

Take some dust of the ground. Form. Breathe into the nostrils the breath of life. Simple, but effective!

(Please note that although men are made of dust, women are made of ribs. Remember that at your next Texas-style barbecue!)

Should you give your man a belly button, or not? Authorities on the traditional method disagree. We ourselves like to include one, as we think it adds a finishing touch. Use your thumb.

Any good rolled-cookie recipe will do, but add extra ginger if you want lively results; and our readers who choose this method usually do! Raisins make good eyes and buttons, but you can use those little silver balls as long as you take care not to break your teeth on them.

Once your man has come out of your oven, you may have trouble hanging on to him. Men made this way are apt to take off down the road, on motorcycles or off them, robbing convenience stores, getting themselves tattooed, and hopping up and down and singing, “Run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man!” Attaching a string to his leg before the oven procedure may help, but – alas – in our experience, not for long.

There’s one good thing to be said for this method, though: these guys are scrumptious! Good enough to eat!

Clothes make the man! How often have you heard it said!

Well, we couldn’t agree more! However, clothes may make the man, but women – by and large – make the clothes, so it follows that the responsibility for the finished model lies with the home seamstress.

Use a good pattern and cut on the lines. Otherwise your man will be all screw-jiggy. Pre-shrink the fabric, or your man will turn out to be smaller than you’d hoped. Sew the darts first, and remember to give that tummy a good tuck, or you’ll be sorry later! Watch those zippers. A badly placed zipper can cause serious functional problems. It’s fun to be different, but not too different!

Casual or formal is up to you; if in doubt, make two, and alternate. Be sure your house has a lot of mirrors. Men made this way – like budgies – seem to adore them!

One very creative woman we know sewed her entire man out of rubber sheeting. Then she used a bicycle pump. Amazing!

We’ve often thought men would be easier to control if they were smaller. Well, here’s a tiny rascal you can hold in the palm of your hand!

Usually found on wedding cakes, these formally dressed minigrooms require painstaking attention to detail, but it’s worth the time you spend with the paintbrush and the food colouring to see the finished result smiling at you with deceptive blandness from the frothy topmost layer of Seven-Minute Boiled Icing!

We much regret the modern custom of substituting plastic for the original sugary confection. For one thing, there is absolutely no payoff when you feel the urge – as we do! – to pop one of these dapper devils into your mouth and suck off his clothes.