Judith
was a lesbian. Only she didn't have short hair and she didn't wear wooden
beads. Neither did she have a girlfriend with a moustache and legs like a
Russian shot-putter. In fact, Judith didn't have a girlfriend at all;
she preferred the anonymity of one-night stands with girls picked up in
gay bars and communal changing rooms. Judith particularly liked the changing
rooms at the exclusive gym she attended where all the tanned PR girls hung-out,
stripped to the waist, chatting nonsensically about their executive boyfriends
and the latest skincare products. Whilst the nubile objects of Judith’s
affection compared the benefits of the latest three-for-the-price-of-two offers
in Boots with make-up bags gifted with a purchase of two face creams in
Debenhams, Judith would happily eye-up their scantily covered buttocks.
Judith’s own choice of underwear was
hipsters, as they flattered her slender hips but, as a voyeur, she preferred
thongs. Often she would imagine ripping them off with her teeth and, after
rampant sex, flossing with them in the same way she might do after enjoying a
particularly good pork chop. Not that Judith should eat pork because it was
against her religion. Well, her father’s religion. Anyway, it didn't really
matter about Judith’s fondness for pork chops anymore as her father had
disowned her when she’d told him that she was “coming out” and that she’d
rather die than spend another evening, at his behest, with his best friend’s
son who had a PhD in engineering. That last dismal night with Englebert had
resulted in a massive showdown - the culmination of years of Judith’s self-hate
for being her father’s lackey. The acne-covered Englebert would have tested
even the most stalwart socialite but, since Judith found nothing remotely
interesting about the internal workings of office photocopiers, and had no
knowledge of the functionalities of dynamic equilibrium, the evening had held
even less interest than her great aunt’s funeral. And Aunt Florrie had been a hundred and six when she died and only two people under the age of ninety, excluding Judith and
her parents, had turned up. So it had been exceptionally dull.
Of course, there were good things and
bad things about not having your father’s love. Or his money. In fact, Judith’s
life had been somewhat difficult for six months when, without the comfort of
her father’s allowance, Judith had been forced to wait tables, in addition to
her office job, to pay her bills. Although Judith enjoyed prying on her
customers’ conversations and flirting with city workers in order to elicit a
big tip, it had been an enormous relief when her father was run over by the no
33 bus. In his statement, the driver had declared he hadn't seen Mr Freud
crossing the road; a fact which Judith thought highly unlikely as her father
weighed twenty stone and had been walking his Great Dane, Hildegard. However,
it also seemed unlikely that the bus driver was an assassin and Judith wasn't
one to complain about minor details. So, even though poor Hildegard had also
perished, Judith was finally relinquished from her father’s influence and took
comfort in the knowledge that Hildegard’s retinas were used to restore the
sight of a Chihuahua from Golders Green.
Unlike Judith, her mother had been
distraught at the news of the tragic accident. Indeed she’d been distraught
until the day Solomon’s will revealed that there was more than enough money for
mother and daughter to live in luxury for the rest of their lives. Judith and
her mother celebrated with champagne and pork medallions on a bed of exotic
rice. Nevertheless, Judith’s mother was
a good woman and kept her joy well hidden, wearing black for six whole weeks
and impressing all the neighbours with her solemnity. Until she met the new
head butcher at Waitrose and was spotted barbecuing spare ribs and drinking
sherry on the Sabbath.
So, it was shortly after her father’s
death, and her mother’s exodus to Spain on a prolonged tour of the vineyards,
that Judith found herself at a crossroads in life. Having temporarily handed
over the management of her father’s pawnbroking business to Jerri Scholar, her
father’s deputy, Judith continued with her office job whilst pondering her
single status and the future of Solomon’s Gold Mines. Judith didn’t trust Jerri
Scholar because his name was, in fact, Gerry Schulberg and Judith had a
deep-seated mistrust of people who changed their names for fashionable reasons.
After all, this was the twenty-first century and none but the most bigoted was
the least concerned by the fact that she was an (ex) Jewess with a penchant for
young girls and pork chops. Not that Judith broadcasted her sexuality but, when
she’d had fleeting affairs with younger women dissatisfied with their
boyfriends, none of them seemed that bothered by either her sexuality or their
own changing sexual preferences. Modern life was one big new adventure which,
at times, young adults and teenagers seemed to consume faster than wholly
appropriate - even to Judith, who was still only thirty-one.
However, Judith was not about to knock
the society which, more or less, had accepted her ways. Particularly as she had
recently discovered that, if she chose carefully, she could also solicit the
attentions of older married women wishing to spice up their flagging sex lives
and whose husbands thought female one-on-one titillating rather than grounds
for divorce. As it turned out, Judith liked mature women as much as she liked
younger women. Although younger women had the benefit of the freshness and
enthusiasm of youth, the experience and determination of older women to obtain
at least one more orgasm before they died impressed Judith, and more than made
up for any sagging buttocks. Judith’s only exception to this mantra was women
who had sagging buttocks, breasts which touched their knees, and who also
participated in aqua-aerobics. Having witnessed the carcass of an elderly
aqua-aerobics swimmer hauled inelegantly from the pool one day, Judith had
decided aqua-aerobics was a precursor to sudden death. The image of the bulging
body, complete with yellow rubber cap and frilled costume, would remain
imprinted on her memory forever.
So it was one day at work, whilst Judith
was contemplating her future and refilling the photocopier (about which she now
had more knowledge of its internal workings than what she felt wholly
comfortable with) that the unexpected and yet, perhaps also the inevitable,
happened. Out of her employer’s office came a vision of loveliness so great
that Judith’s heart fluttered with the stirrings of lust and, very possibly,
love. Judith had been beginning to wonder if love and marriage was something
that happened only to heterosexuals. She had almost entirely resigned herself
to a life of physically satisfying but emotionally barren intercourse when
Shelley, eighteen-and-a-half with big brown eyes and hair from a L’Oreal
advert, tripped gaily into the open-plan office with the aptly named Mr Hands
following close behind, his palms hovering over her curvaceous derrière.
So the delightful Shelley joined the
team at Handy Hands’ Stationery Suppliers and became the object of both Judith
and Mr Hands’ desire. Unlike the salacious Mr Hands who could barely stop
himself salivating over Shelley, Judith found herself adopting traits that she had
previously thought more particular to love-struck heteros: gazing into space,
doodling hearts on her notebooks and maintaining a safe distance from her love
interest in case of embarrassing rejection. As the weeks went by, Judith found
it increasingly awkward when Shelley would pull up a chair, her soft breasts
pouring over the top of her cheap low-cut tops, and ask Judith to demonstrate
the finer details of Excel spreadsheets. Unfortunately, Judith would often
imagine herself sucking Shelley’s sweet pink nipples and was unable to
concentrate on the job in hand which, for the purposes of demonstrating Excel,
was rather a hindrance.
So with love in her heart and confusion
in her logic, Judith stayed on at Handy Hand’s Stationery Suppliers despite the
fact that she was sure Jerri/Gerry was on the fiddle. Profits at Solomon’s Gold
Mines were down and Jerri’s excuses about the gold price crashing, whilst
seemingly plausible, didn't tally with her examination of the spreadsheets. She
supposed that Jerri thought that because she’d only worked in a small office
and had never been ruthlessly ambitious he didn't think her capable of spotting
any irregularities. However, the fact was that Judith had inherited more of her
father’s aptitude for numbers than her mother’s aptitude for the consumption of
Spanish Cava.
The unhealthy situation came to a head
one day when Judith, stomach aching and with a splitting headache caused by her
unrequited love, was not at her best. Feeling particularly irritated that she’d
run out of staples just as she was about to affix her final spreadsheet of the
day, she dutifully headed down to the stationery cupboard, deluxe stapler in
hand, to replenish her supplies before packing up and returning to her flat to
spend the evening leaving woeful messages on Facebook. Judith was in two minds
about Facebook as occasionally her exes would leave encouraging comments about
her now undesired single status but, for the most part, Judith was besieged
with a stream of photographs of lattes or cream cakes. These visual feasts only
served to make her more depressed as, although Judith didn't have a weight
problem, she didn't need to be reminded that some women could eat anything they
wanted and still not have to work-out. So, feeling somewhat peeved about her
situation in life, Judith refilled her stapler and pocketed the remainder of
the packet. She was returning down the corridor, wondering if the news about
her stapler being refilled would be sufficiently interesting to post on
Facebook, when a loud squeal reverberated from the broom cupboard. Judith
realised the squeal was that of a woman in distress and, more importantly, a
woman whose high-pitched girly squeal was instantly recognisable as that of her
beloved Shelley.
With her adrenaline running high, Judith
threw open the door to the broom cupboard aghast at the thought of Shelley
clinging to a top shelf, the portable steps having fallen away. But what Judith
found was not Shelley holding on for dear life and about to fall into her arms
but the poor girl wedged up against a stack of disinfectant, cleaning cloth in
hand, wearing an expression of sheer terror. In front of the terrified Shelley,
with his head buried in her breasts and a hand up her skirt, was Mr Hands
grunting and moaning like a sow in labour.
As Judith absorbed the ghastly scene,
her gaze locked with Shelley’s pleading eyes.
“Help me,” mouthed Shelley as Mr Hands’ fingers encroached inside her
knickers. Shelley’s pitiful appeal pierced Judith’s heart and reservations, and
with explosive fury Judith marched into the broom cupboard, grabbed Mr Hands’
testicles as if she was going to bite into a massive pork chop and stapled them
with all her might. Mr Hands screamed. And screamed. And with a final scream of
ear-piercing stupendousness, Mr Hands collapsed to the floor writhing in agony,
tears flooding down his beetroot face.
“You bastard,” said Judith and, as she
was never one to do anything by halves, bent down and stapled his testicles,
not once, but twice more to be absolutely certain Mr Hands would never, ever,
touch her dear Shelley again.
On completing her rescue mission, Judith
held out her hand to the trembling Shelley and the two of them retreated to the
office, cleared their desks, deleted all the electronic spreadsheets, shredded
the paper ones, and sojourned to the Chinese restaurant for a dinner of sweet
and sour pork balls accompanied by Spanish Cava. It was over a second helping
of the pork balls that Judith, her emotions still running high and slightly
intoxicated by the wine, declared her undying love to Shelley.
Not knowing what to expect, Judith held
her breath at the possibility that pork balls might be thrown in her face. So
it was a huge relief and surprise for Judith, even bigger than when her father
had been mowed down by the no 33, when the almost inconceivable happened:
Shelley declared her undying love in return. It transpired that Shelley had
loved Judith since the day she’d joined Handy Hands' Stationery Suppliers and
the only reason why Shelley hadn't declared her love was that she had no idea
that Judith was also a lesbian. In her innocence, Shelley had been led to
believe that most lesbians had moustaches and legs like a Russian shot-putter
and that Judith, who had neither a moustache nor unwholesome legs, could
therefore not be a lesbian. As for herself, Shelley believed she was a
misfortunate rare exception to the lesbian rule and, lacking interest in hairy
ladies with muscular thighs, she would be doomed to a life without love.
So perhaps it goes without saying that
Judith and Shelley got married and lived happily ever after. But in this case,
not before Judith had first fired Jerri/Gerry for embezzlement and discovered
her father’s payments for a lease to a flat registered to a woman who,
coincidentally, shared the same surname as the bus driver who had run over her
father and poor Hildegard. On balance, Judith decided her mother didn't need to
know this information as it was pointless spoiling her new-found happiness. As
Judith deleted the evidence she surmised that, even though she was still in the
learning phase of life, she’d already discovered that all over the world people
were screwing each other and it didn't really matter what race, religion or
sexuality you were. Neither did it matter whether you were fat or thin or
beautiful or ugly. Or even if you did aqua-aerobics. All that mattered was that
you got to share a little love.
 |
| Never underestimate a woman. Or the power of her stapler. |
Pork Chops and Promiscuity is taken from my short story collection A Modern Life now available on Amazon.
