An Indecent Obsession. Mudrooroo
as now I was enjoying seeing her get to her feet and gargle out with mineral water, then go to the window and spit it out. With this done, she turned to me, while I was zipping up and beginning to think about that infernal student who had complained about my not accepting his explanation for his late assignment and failing him. I supposed I should pass him then she broke my train of thought with, ‘I used to go with this boy, Ben. He started mistreating me. I went and reported him to the Sexual Harassment Office and he was almost expelled. Now, he won’t even stay in the same room with me.’ She smiled at this, and I scowled. This was what I had begun fearing. My career was on the line and even then I knew that she wasn’t the type to remain true and loyal. After all, I had taught her in my class and had to listen to her feminist views, which, it seemed, did not go as far as not to poach on another woman’ man. Whatever, I was well and truly trapped. I put a brave face on things and instantly made up my mind.
‘What about a weekend in Surfers Paradise’, I said. She was working class and although I loathed the place, she would love it.
She quickly agreed and it was to be that weekend. I hummed and hawed a little about how I was in the midst of marking assignments, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer or postpone the trip either. I had to agree, even though it would be hard to explain my absence to Elaine who was already suspicious.
After some thought, I sought to allay my wife’s suspicions, by inventing a professor at Bond University who wanted me to look over a difficult thesis. She looked glum at this. I had planned to take her and the kids to Lone Pine to see the animals, but I stressed the urgency of the call and then put up with her coldness for the rest of the evening and succeeding days to Friday when the grand event was to take place, but there was a faculty meeting and Darlene had to wait until Saturday. I told her that I would pick her up, bright and early.
Next day, she was sitting in my car and quite content with herself. We stopped at Strawberry Farm for some of their overpriced ice-cream and continued on down the Pacific Highway to the turnoff at Reedy Creek Road and went along it to Burleigh Heads which had a nice beach.
We got into our bathers and it was our first time together almost naked. I worked out at the university gym twice a week and kept in good shape. My belly was almost flat and my pectoral muscles firm. She at thirty was still firm. At least what I could see of her. She wore a one piece blue bathing suit which covered her midriff and front up to her neck. I liked a woman in a bikini myself. It left less to the imagination. But her costume was cut to show her legs to me. They were two of her best features, long and shapely.
Of course, while I was eyeing her, she was doing the same to me. ‘Look, we have the same sort of legs,’ she observed, then spoilt it by saying that now she knew that men could have cellulose too.
In reply, I ran into the water. I led a sedentary lifestyle, desk bound and could I help it if I had gotten a little overweight? Darlene dashed past me splashing me with water and dived into a wave. I followed and came next to her. Her hair was plastered to her head and I noticed how sharp her chin was, how large her eyes and how small her mouth. ‘A rosebud,’ I thought romantically as I kissed her. She had been chewing some sort of gum and there was a fresh taste to her saliva. For a brief moment, I wondered what my mouth tasted of, breakfast probably then dismissed it as we pranced about in the surf. Every now and again, I held her lithe wet body and planted a kiss on her mouth. She received my tongue passively.
When we had finished playing in the surf, we got dressed and it was time for lunch. She combed her hair back and again I noticed the severity of her face. Not a trace of the plumpish erotic attractiveness of my wife. Her nose was too big for her face, but at least for now, her vivacity and sense of well being made up for her lack of beauty. At times, especially in photographs she could even appear beautiful, that thick mob of hair removing the imperfections and creating symmetry of features.
There was a beachside seafood restaurant along the beach and we stopped there for lunch. I had grilled red fin and surprisingly Darlene ordered a steak, smilingly telling me that it most likely was from Rockhampton, where her family originally hailed from. It was then that I learnt that her father had worked in the abattoirs. Still there was something odd about ordering a steak, no matter what nostalgia it invoked, in a seafood restaurant, and I continued to look askance at her. She went on to inform me that at Tweed Heads on the New South Wales’ border there was a takeaway fish shop which had the very best fish on the coast and she would wait until then. In that she was right, for my fish proved dry with brown lines indicating its age. It came with the traditional chips, which remembering her comment about my cellulose I pushed aside. She had no qualms and helped herself to them, though she had ignored most of her meat. A typical student, I thought.
It was after as we sat over coffee, though she had tea that I learnt more about her. Our affair had commenced and continued without me being much aware or interested in her past life. Now, I learnt that she knew quite a bit about Surfers’ and at the age of sixteen, that was when her class of people went to work, had gotten a job at the Gold Coast Bulletin. I nodded to this. I had seen that publication. It was difficult to call it a newspaper as it was filled with advertising.
We got back into my Saab which really impressed her. It was an expensive car, but I did like the best. Something that made me stick out a bit from the hoi polloi, though there was one sitting in my car. She fiddled around with the sound system and got Triple J and what I called student pop. This type of music was far beneath me, but she enjoyed it and after a time I barely heard the noise just as I barely saw the many motels that edged the Gold Coast Highway. I should have for I had forgotten to book us into one.
We reached Tweed Heads with the tall tower of the Twin City Hotel. ‘Care for a drink,’ I asked her, and not waiting for an answer pulled into the parking lot. We went inside and into a balcony restaurant bar where I ordered a Bloody Mary and she wanted, well, a diet coke. The drink of choice for female students and I asked her facetiously, ‘If she wanted it straight or with ice?’ She didn’t reply, but gazed at me from those huge slightly cockeyed blue eyes of hers. The pulled-back hair emphasized the size and the lighting must have emphasized their depth. Overcome, I reached out and took her hand. She gave it a squeeze and then extricated her fingers when the waiter arrived to take our order.
To get to that balcony cafe bar, we had had to pass through a huge cavernous smoky space filled with winking and beeping poker machines. These were the Twin Towers’ main attraction. There must have been over five hundred of the buggers and after we had relaxed awhile I had gazed through the glass door at the shiny comeons, and decided to try my luck. Darlene with her background most likely would get so rapt in them, that I would have to pull her away. ‘You wanna play d’slots,’ I asked, faking a Humphrey Bogart accent. I expected it to elicit a smile, but it didn’t. I supposed that she hadn’t even heard of him and would have liked me to impersonate Brad Pitt, whom I had seen in Kalifornia, quite an interesting movie and one which I would like to see again.
‘No, but you go ahead. I’ll watch and take a turn every now and then,’ she replied with a marked lack of interest.
I settled down on a stool with my cup of 20c pieces and fed them into a machine. I had no luck and tried another, then had to get another twenty dollars worth of coins. Darlene watched on, and when I offered her a coin and told her to put it in for luck, she did so slowly, and didn’t even pay attention as the fruit and numbers flickered, stopped, then beeped on five. I lost these and switched to the next machine and fed the rest of my coins in. I wasn’t hitting anything big, but I was getting 2s and 5s, and so I decided to stay with this machine and told her to mind it, while I went to the cashier for another twenty dollars worth of coins. The small amounts kept on popping up, but the biggies eluded me. I continued shoving the coins in. It was like being hypnotized by the winking lights, the cheeping noises as the machine returned my twenty cents, and then took it in again without a murmur. Others, many who looked like pensioners were all around me. A few won and many lost. I was one of the losers. Well, lucky in love unlucky in gambling, but I kept on.
‘Let me have a go,’ Darlene finally said, not hiding a yawn. I let her press the button and the machine chirped and 25 came up. She hit the button again and 200 flashed up. I pressed and lost. She hit it again and our score was five hundred.
‘Let’s