Short Thing #2

bored

I wonder sometimes if there is anyone else that gets bored of food. Not like standing and staring into the pantry or standing and staring into the fridge because you can’t think of what to cook for dinner one night. Or wandering around the supermarket gathering ingredients that have no business being together but they are the only things you could imagine eating. I’m talking about deep down food boredom. Or worse. Deep down life boredom. All consuming. Inside your soul. Inside the world. Boredom.

I love to cook. It’s one of the things that helps to define me when given a social questionnaire. At dinner parties or in meeting friends of friends in other situations, after they ask you the first question on their list, “What do you do?” and you chat about your job and theirs for a few minutes, justifying how you love it and hate it in equal measure. How your day to day routine is fulfilling and you’re lucky to have the benefits it brings. Or not. How you hate it but feel trapped because of your mortgage or your kids or your wife. After they ask you what you do, they inevitably ask “Do you have any hobbies?” or similarly, but more terrifyingly, “What do you enjoy doing?”

Cooking is one of the things I tend to say I enjoy doing. There is a long list I can pull from to answer the ‘enjoy doing’ question. Cooking. Travelling. Swimming. Galleries. Road trips. Adventures. Beaches. Going to markets. Reading. Going to the cinema. Live music. Festivals. It depends on where my focus is on that particular day. Usually what I’ve rehearsed talking about in the hour or so before the meeting of new people event is going to occur. After I’ve gotten ready but before it’s time to go. The nervous self question time, “What am I going to talk about to these people?”, “What questions should I ask?” and “How will I get through this evening looking charming and interesting and fun as opposed to what I really am?” (A track-suit pant wearing, coffee drinking, cooking for one, watching old episodes of my favourite tv shows while eating my dinner type person).

Sometimes I’m content with working in the hive. The billions of other worker bees and I are fine. I don’t want to rock the boat. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I don’t want anybody else to get hurt. And usually, I’m content to play my part. Do my job. Consume. Produce. Consume. Produce. Relax. Stress. Save. Spend. Fly away. Come home. Start all over again.

But other times I get bored.

I’m bored of grocery shopping and seeing everyone else grocery shopping. I’m bored of routines and going to friend’s houses talking about the same things. I’m bored of people’s dramas. I’m bored of my dramas. I’m bored of social networking. I’m bored of socialising. I’m bored of my town. I’m bored of my country. I’m bored of the news. I’m bored of everyone I know buying houses and stuff and getting married and having babies and buying more stuff and bigger houses and having more babies. I’m bored of conversations about which school kids should go to. I’m bored of arguing about the same stuff. I’m bored of wearing jeans. I’m bored of forgetting to buy a light bulb for the kitchen. I’m bored of the expectation that is finding love, which is supposed to fulfil you and make you feel fabulous, but inevitably makes you buy houses and stuff and have babies. And so on.

I’m even bored of cooking.

I look at everyone else and I can’t figure out what motivates them. I know that life is to live. I know that the meaning of life is to love. I just can’t imagine how and what it is that we should do for the rest of our lives. After we’ve lived it up in our twenties. After we’ve gone to university and shagged everything that moves and taken every drug we could afford. After we’ve drunk ourselves into amnesia. After we’ve travelled around the world with our best friends, a back-pack and no money.

And then in our thirties after we’ve had the kids and bought the houses and put the rings on our fingers and taken the rings off our fingers. After we’ve written a novel or made a film or painted a masterpiece or worked for a charity or consolidated our career.

After we’ve done everything that we’re supposed to do. After we’ve ticked all the boxes. After we wait and watch our kids grow up. And then tend to our gardens. And fill up our lives with the day to day to day. Coffees with friends. Plane rides to destinations. New restaurants. New loves. New jobs and houses and dramas. Grandchildren. Great grandchildren. Decades to decades.

What, then, am I going to cook for dinner?

(c) Samantha Florence, 2011.

Short Thing #1

I imagine it would be like this

One day the woman with the wild hair, who walked her dog past my large bathroom window, was wearing a rockabilly outfit. It was a fifties style dress, tight around the waist and full skirted. Her breasts were large and accentuated and her dark skin looked darker and lovelier in comparison to the bright white and bright red of her dress. She wore shoes that weren’t right for walking the dog. But they were right for the outfit, which was what really mattered.

My bathroom window backs directly onto the train tracks. We don’t have much of a fence. There is our bathroom window. Then the train tracks. Then the pathway on the other side, where the woman with the wild hair walks her dog.

I flushed the toilet and washed my hands. I dried them on a towel that used to be white. I don’t know what colour it is now.

My bathroom is long and narrow and small. It is old. And mostly covered in dark maroon tiles. They could even be brown. It’s hard to tell. The toilet is at one end of the bath. While you’re sitting down you can reach out and touch the opposite wall. To the left. The wall on the right is the wall with the window.

While you’re sitting down on the toilet the bath is right in front of you. You can touch that, too. With your knees if you’re tall enough. Which I am.

The shower is at the other end of the bath. There is a clear glass screen which separates the bath and the shower. The shower head is on the furthest wall from where you are if you’re sitting on the toilet.

The small basin fits in there, too. Somehow.

My youngest son cries and I leave the bathroom. He’s in the dark lounge room with his grandfather. Both of my sons are in the dark lounge room with their grandfather. Their grandfather is my husband’s father. We all live here. In my husband’s father’s house.

Another day the woman who walks her dog past my bathroom window is wearing a high waisted, pencil black skirt. The curves of her backside are large but she doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, she seems to like that she has a large backside. She seems to like that you can see her large backside in her tight black skirt. She wears a pale blue silk blouse, tucked into her tight black skirt, just under her breasts. Her shoes are, again, inappropriate but perfect. They are so high I doubt I could walk in them at all. With or without the dog. Her wild hair remains wild. Black and curly and long and unruly. There are small sections of hair that could be bleached for effect or could be areas where she is greying. She doesn’t look old enough to be greying. She doesn’t look as if she would ever go grey. Ever age. She looks as if she is going to a job interview. If it weren’t for the dog.

My husband comes home and I hear my eldest son cry. He always cries when my husband comes home. He cries because my husband has left him. He cries because he has been away. My son’s not immediately happy that he’s back. He’s sad that he’s ever been gone.

A train shakes me out of staring. It thunders past and I leave the bathroom. If the passengers on the train paid any attention they could see straight into my bathroom. The large window is very rarely closed, especially on days like this. Passengers, or people walking their dogs, could see straight into my bathroom. Could see all of us on the toilet or in the bath or in the shower. Naked. If they paid attention.

My husband and I don’t talk much anymore. My sons are three and ten months old. I love my husband. I love my sons. But that’s life.

My husband is holding my youngest son in his arms. My youngest son is eating a now mushy biscuit. He seems happy enough. My eldest son is still stained with tears, he cries like me, dramatically, causing an almost allergic reaction on the skin on his face. We both go red and blotchy when we cry. It is very unattractive.

My husband is getting my eldest son a drink of water. Using just two hands to hold a ten month old, avoid a mushy biscuit, turn the tap on and hold a hand-me-down faded plastic cup under the stream of water. He does this with grace. I don’t know how he does this.

I kiss him hello and he kisses me back. Quickly. Our two sets of lips meet and make a noise. I feel a little bit of his saliva on my lips and I’m sure he’s got a little bit of my saliva on his. A little bit of a different temperature. Just slightly. Enough to know that it’s someone else’s saliva.

One Saturday morning I take my eldest son to the swimming pool. We save a little bit of change where we can throughout the week and if we’ve got enough for his entrance fee and my entrance fee I take him swimming. I think it’s important for children to learn how to swim. My husband does, too. It would be nice if all four of us could go to the swimming pool, though. I’m sure that’s how other families do it.

My husband and I had an argument before my son and I went to the swimming pool. I can’t remember what the argument was about. It felt like we were going to give up. That our years together were over. But I got my eldest son dressed in his swimming shorts. I put on my old bikini and a singlet that covered my old bikini. And we left.

When we came back my husband was in the shower with my youngest son. I said hello to my husband’s father in the dark lounge room. My son and I made our way to the bathroom and opened the door. My husband’s hair had something matted into it, near the top of his neck. I asked him if he would mind if our eldest son got into the shower with him, too. He said of course he didn’t mind. I took my eldest son’s clothes off and put him in the shower.

I looked at my husband as he turned to give my son some space. My husband looked at me and I knew we weren’t arguing anymore. He turned his face back around and I looked at his bare back. His naked behind. I caught a glimpse of his penis that did nothing but hang there. I watched him wash our eldest son’s hair. He did this still while holding onto our youngest son in his arms.

I took my clothes off, too. I stood naked in our bathroom but I knew I had to wait. There was certainly not enough room in the shower for all four of us. I looked out the window. Steam flowing out and away.

The woman with the wild hair was wearing an eighties outfit today. She had a short denim skirt over fluoro green, knee length leggings. She had a cropped t-shirt and lots of plastic bangles on her long wrists. This time her shoes matched the outfit and the activity. She had low cut bright pink Converse trainers on. Her dog paused to sniff at a spot on the opposite fence.

The woman with the wild hair looked over at me. Into my bathroom window.

At all my nakedness.

© Samantha Florence