Altar Ego by Kathy Lette Read Free Book Online Page B

devastated. But there was no time to dwell on the hypocrisy of the situation. The lack of male response had tapped into a vein; a varicose vein. A few hours ago I’d been vibrant and invigorated. But how could I be feeling my oats and my varicose veins at the same time? Maybe that wretched assistant was right? Yes, the evidence was mounting up. Hadn’t I actually gone to bed last New Year’s Eve? Why else would I hate jungle music? And hey. You
know
you’re old when you no longer laugh at the concept of electrolysis.
    Suddenly, here I was in Margaret Rutherford mode. A tweed cape and bicycle beckoned. Any minute now, I’d find myself tremendously exercised about my bowels.
    If I were a building, I’d have subsidence. Hell, I’d be listed. If I were a tree in Yellowstone National Park, whole girl-guide packs would be hiking through me. But there was even worse to come.
    Reaching the Mall, I stood outside the white, wedding cake of a building housing the Institute of Contemporary Arts and sighed resignedly. The truth of it is, I’m a bit of a shirkaholic. I’m convinced that historians will look upon this era as the Dark Ages Mark 2. All the women I knew were ricocheting from one nervous breakdown to another, leaving a trail of feral, nanny-reared children in their wake, juggling dinner parties and Prozac overdoses and extramarital affairs (because their workaholic husbands are too tired for sex), gushing all the time from their psychiatric-unit beds that they’d be bored if they didn’t work. I, on the other hand, have vocational cancer. My ambition’s in remission. The only thing I wanted to be when I grew up was young.
    Having run away from school at fifteen, I have, in my time, scraped the bottom of the job barrel – from bedpan emptier to buxom serving wench. While putting myself through art school, I’d worked nights inserting colour supplements into newspapers just so that I could tell people I was a ‘hand inserter’. I’ve been a kissogram, a cabaret singer and dressed as a human street sign for a gym in Woolloomooloo, Sydney, which is where I’d met Kate. How could you not bond with someone when you’re both parading around in promotional sandwich boards that read ‘Fat and Ugly? …
Want to be just ugly?
’
    Ever since the United Nations had declared her love life a disaster area six years ago, Kate had worked at the ICA. When she was promoted to Artistic Director, junior only to God and the Great Barrier Reef, she’d help me fail upwards into a job in the PR department. Although I tried to persuade the nude poets and Mutant Nymphet Sculptresses of the benefits of working without the pressure of success – I still had to turn up at the office occasionally.
    The staff were mostly of the ‘all sex is rape’, ’snot fair Millie Tants variety. What the sign outside the gallery should have read was ‘Danger. Extremely Hormonal Females For Next Mile’. I didn’t so much receive a wage here. It was more like combat pay. Especially when an exhibition was being mounted.
    I pushed through the glass doors and negotiated my way over the layers of artists’ legs, woven backpacks, ethnic papooses and the seven vehicle pile-up of prams. My arrival silenced the buzz.
    ‘So?’ greeted Kate, readjusting her red-framed glasses. ‘How did Julian take it? Did he go ape-shit? Did you tell him you didn’t love him enough? I suppose you couldn’t tell him the truth; the male suicide rate is high enough already, right?’
    ‘I
do
love him enough … It’s just …’ I glanced at the expectant, eager faces around me. Was I really going to strip off to my emotional knickers here? Like hell I was. ‘It’s just that there are three billion other men in the world whom I’d like to see naked, you know?’ I said glibly.
    I trailed Kate to the main gallery where she was supervising the unpacking of the latest exhibition – a feminist collection entitled ‘What Women Want’.
    I picked up the glossy brochure