command obedience. It makes him catch sight of himself, shake himself awake. There is recognition in her eyes, shame, a stricken glimpse of something emptied, a gulf of ragged edges and constriction.
âSorry,â she says.
He feels the moment heat up, become molten.
Andrea struggles with the car door, gets in and manoeuvres it closed, for once not swearing at it. The jeweller disappears back inside; his garden blurs and runs through the streaming windscreen.
The heat is in Daveâs chest now. They sit there, breathing. He knows as soon as he starts the car there will be a cooling again, a loss of this strange fluidity, so he floats in it, feeling it rearrange him, before turning to look at his wife.
There is her, and there is everything after this; her transforming face, her naked fingers, her precise choreography. He can no sooner think of not having her as pulling a layer out from under his own skin.
She leans over and kisses him on the mouth, pulls back and grins. The heat spreads, stretches. He fears for a moment the join may not hold. There arenât tools small enough for this. There arenât subtitles.
âHowâs the swelling?â he croaks. On her cheek thereâs a glitter of metal where his fingers must have brushed her. He can smell her hair.
âGoing down,â she says.
He steps on the clutch and finds first gear, feeling the calibrations gnash like teeth momentarily then drop into place, lubricated, fitted together like bones in a hand.
The Testosterone Club
I have left my husband: rolled up my wedding linen around my wedding crockery, packed it all into the back of my car wedged safely with my wedding towel set, and left.
Six years is a long time â especially, as the old joke goes, when you consider you only get four for armed robbery â and the crockery is by no means a complete set any more. It stands testament to the chips and dings and cracks of a careless and imperfect marriage, but I have tucked it in gently around my preserving kit on the back seat. The preserving kit is in pristine condition â perfectly preserved, you might say, if you were in the mood for making jokes. I valued it highly, when I was married. Yesterday.
Other households greet spring and summer because the flowers come out and lambs gambol and butterflies dance in the meadow; my husband welcomed spring because it meant I could buy boxes of vegetables at knockdown prices and start preserving. Pickled cucumbers and onions were a particular favourite, preferably ingested slowly in front of Saturday Sporting World .
My husband didnât excel at any one sport; he watched them all equally. He could work his way through a jar of pickled onions in an afternoon. Itâs thirsty work, and several beers were required, forming a lethal cocktail of yeast and vinegar. He had two mates who were unfailing in their support of this. They would arrive on Saturday at 12.15, just in time for lunch, then settle into watching the match. Actually itâs unfair to say they only watched â their participation in the game fell just short of actually playing it. They yelled, they writhed, they spear-tackled each other across the couch and slid crunchingly over the rug, rising with faces of serious concentration and pieces of corn chip clinging to their hair. They even dressed the part, in tracksuits and expensive running shoes. Their hair was damp and tousled as if theyâd just stepped from the shower in the gym; they carried with them a misleading but unmistakable hint of liniment. Macka, Chooka and my husband, Barry. Or Barra, as he was known. They were a club. A testosterone club.
I made up this name myself. It wasnât so much because of their adoration of sports and each other, the aggressive pawing as one would playfully spring the other in a headlock. It was more to do with their complete confidence in their own majestic sexual magnetism. They woke in the morning with this confidence;
âSorry,â she says.
He feels the moment heat up, become molten.
Andrea struggles with the car door, gets in and manoeuvres it closed, for once not swearing at it. The jeweller disappears back inside; his garden blurs and runs through the streaming windscreen.
The heat is in Daveâs chest now. They sit there, breathing. He knows as soon as he starts the car there will be a cooling again, a loss of this strange fluidity, so he floats in it, feeling it rearrange him, before turning to look at his wife.
There is her, and there is everything after this; her transforming face, her naked fingers, her precise choreography. He can no sooner think of not having her as pulling a layer out from under his own skin.
She leans over and kisses him on the mouth, pulls back and grins. The heat spreads, stretches. He fears for a moment the join may not hold. There arenât tools small enough for this. There arenât subtitles.
âHowâs the swelling?â he croaks. On her cheek thereâs a glitter of metal where his fingers must have brushed her. He can smell her hair.
âGoing down,â she says.
He steps on the clutch and finds first gear, feeling the calibrations gnash like teeth momentarily then drop into place, lubricated, fitted together like bones in a hand.
The Testosterone Club
I have left my husband: rolled up my wedding linen around my wedding crockery, packed it all into the back of my car wedged safely with my wedding towel set, and left.
Six years is a long time â especially, as the old joke goes, when you consider you only get four for armed robbery â and the crockery is by no means a complete set any more. It stands testament to the chips and dings and cracks of a careless and imperfect marriage, but I have tucked it in gently around my preserving kit on the back seat. The preserving kit is in pristine condition â perfectly preserved, you might say, if you were in the mood for making jokes. I valued it highly, when I was married. Yesterday.
Other households greet spring and summer because the flowers come out and lambs gambol and butterflies dance in the meadow; my husband welcomed spring because it meant I could buy boxes of vegetables at knockdown prices and start preserving. Pickled cucumbers and onions were a particular favourite, preferably ingested slowly in front of Saturday Sporting World .
My husband didnât excel at any one sport; he watched them all equally. He could work his way through a jar of pickled onions in an afternoon. Itâs thirsty work, and several beers were required, forming a lethal cocktail of yeast and vinegar. He had two mates who were unfailing in their support of this. They would arrive on Saturday at 12.15, just in time for lunch, then settle into watching the match. Actually itâs unfair to say they only watched â their participation in the game fell just short of actually playing it. They yelled, they writhed, they spear-tackled each other across the couch and slid crunchingly over the rug, rising with faces of serious concentration and pieces of corn chip clinging to their hair. They even dressed the part, in tracksuits and expensive running shoes. Their hair was damp and tousled as if theyâd just stepped from the shower in the gym; they carried with them a misleading but unmistakable hint of liniment. Macka, Chooka and my husband, Barry. Or Barra, as he was known. They were a club. A testosterone club.
I made up this name myself. It wasnât so much because of their adoration of sports and each other, the aggressive pawing as one would playfully spring the other in a headlock. It was more to do with their complete confidence in their own majestic sexual magnetism. They woke in the morning with this confidence;
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