SAM
I didn’t intend to be sharing a small table with my mother and Rebecca at Kow Ling’s with a dildo in my bag. That wasn’t the plan at all. The plan that evening was to find some suitably outrageously coloured fishnet stockings to wear to this damn gig I’d agreed to go to. I was thinking fluoro pink, or yellow or something. Something garish and punky. I knew that no one attending the gig would bat an eyelid but at least I’d feel more like the rebel I wanted to be. I didn’t like Coldplay but I sure as hell wasn’t going to just wibble along to it unconsciously. No, I was going to be awake and scathing and wearing really ugly fishnets to prove it. And the plan was to pick some up en route to the restaurant.
The complicating factor to the plan was this. I, wandering past a sex shop, had a blinding moment of inspiration and went inside. Sure enough, there had the kind of tawdry stockings I was looking for, lined up in crisp packets, and I chose a pair with a fluorescent leopard-skin pattern on them almost immediately. So far, so 1983 gone wrong. However I had a little time on my hands, which is never a good thing for me, especially when I had cash in my wallet. This is where the plan started to go awry.
The drinks and lingering smooch with Charlie a couple of nights ago had, unsurprisingly, been sloshing around my head ever since. In particular, I couldn’t stop thinking about Charlie’s observations regarding my abundance of vim vam voom, my passion, my boiling belligerence, as he saw it. I had sighed many times recalling that conversation. I, ever hungry for a compliment, had lapped up the attention and had thrown out my intentions to sever ties with Charlie on the spot. He was keen, he was keen, he was most definitely keen, people! I couldn’t walk away from that, not after all the work I had put in to catching him.
But. And this was the rub. I had been thinking hard during the previous sigh-filled days and I was starting to wonder if the gregarious, slightly rude person I had always presented to the world – most definitely to Charlie – wasn’t just that, a presentation. Was that really who I was underneath? Was that really who I wanted to be? It was the weekend at his parents that had shaken me up. I couldn’t get rid of the shame of my behaviour. I had crossed my own moral line, stepping away from being a sarcastic quibbler into the territory of being downright rude. And it didn’t feel right, not one little bit.
So there I was in a sex shop, looking at dildos and handcuffs and lacy fanny floss, when my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Just got off phone from Dad – he was asking if you were all better.
Oh God, now I had to think about Charlie’s dad!
That’s sweet of him. Did you tell him the Dickhead H6 virus has almost finished?
Hahaha. You crazy woman.
Crazy woman . . .
‘I wonder,’ I murmured at the racks of fake penises. And my mind ticked over: if I could be excessively passionate and – what was it – ‘boiling inside’ in the bedroom, then maybe he wouldn’t notice if I was making a complete arsehole of myself the rest of the time. I wouldn’t have to be outspoken and bordering on rude just to show off to him. Instead I’d give him fireworks in bed, and then when we were married and spending lots of time with his parents, I’d be as nice as pie and he’d have forgotten that he loved me for being offensive.
I paid for the dildo and tights within seconds. I had it all figured out.
‘So what have you been buying? Thought you were broke?’ Rebecca gave the bag a swift little kick with a navy suede toe.
‘Hey, don’t do that!’
Rebecca laughed. ‘Well, share then. What have you been buying?’
I recognised that look in my sister’s eye. It was stubborn, grade five. I had to throw her something to get her off my back. I bent down and tried to open it without showing the entire contents and pulled out the tights, throwing them across to Rebecca.
‘Hmmm.’ Rebecca picked them up from her lap and turned them over with doubtful fingers. ‘Delightful.’
‘Yeah, well, I felt like a bit of trash.’
‘For a change?’ Rebecca smirked.
‘Rebecca!’
‘It’s all right, Mum, I’m used to it.’ I glared at my sister. ‘They’re to wear to a gig. Coldplay.’
Rebecca looked confused.
‘Exactly.’
‘God, you’re so cryptic sometimes, Sam.’ Rebecca threw the tights back, no longer interested.
‘That sounds like fun, dear,’ Mum offered. I stiffened with annoyance at her bright, encouraging tone and exhaled through my nose violently.
‘Well, I really hate them actually, Mum.’
‘Oh.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Then why—’
‘Charlie’s taking me.’
‘Oh! Oh, right.’
Rebecca whipped her head up from intensely studying her nails and gave me a hard, glittering stare that I felt cutting into my middle. It lasted only a moment though and she snapped back to her more normal level of disdain and kicked the bag again.
‘So what else is in there?’
‘Nothing.’ I coloured. What could I say to put her off?
‘Doesn’t feel like nothing to me!’ And Rebecca had snatched the bag before I could stop her and was holding it above the table, reaching in, feeling something and pulling it out.
Fuck.
A shiny gold dildo being held aloft in Rebecca’s talons.
‘Ooooh! You naughty thing!’
There was a moment – which felt like forever – before Mum realised what was happening, and I thought that perhaps Rebecca would stuff it back into the bag before Mum registered, before we actually had to have a conversation about it, because surely, surely Rebecca wouldn’t want to embarrass Mum as well as me?
‘I really don’t want to know what you’re going to do with it!’ Rebecca uttered, this time shrieking and shaking the totally fucking transparent box.
‘Rebecca! Give it back!’
I desperately tried to snatch it from her but she held it out of my reach, taunting me and laughing.
‘Stop it!’ Mum’s angry-beast voice came out of nowhere and cut through the hysteria with immediate effect. Rebecca sat down, chastened, and passed the dildo back to me.
‘Sorry.’
‘I should think so, you’re making a scene.’
We looked around. People were turning away now, tittering into their noodles. I felt my blood hammering through every vessel in my body. I hadn’t heard that voice for many years but it couldn’t have come at a better time.
‘It’s a present for someone at work, a joke for a hen night,’ I squeaked.
‘We’re not discussing it, Sam.’ And Mum opened the heavy brown vinyl-bound menu decisively. ‘Now what are we going to eat?’
I stared at the menu unseeing, still reeling from the embarrassment of having the only dildo I’d ever purchased waved around in a restaurant in front of my mother. But also, as I turned the plastic pages, I was still hurting from the freezing stare Rebecca gave me when she heard I was going with Charlie to this stupid gig. That was completely unnecessary. Completely.