Altar Ego by Kathy Lette Page B

i(t).’ I cringed at the way she strangled her t’s. ‘I mean, what exac(t)ly do ya fink you’re up to?’
    I looked at Julian’s rapidly detumescing appendage. ‘Later,’ he promised, re-zipping.
    I sighed. ‘Not much, Mum.’
    Just a lick and a promise.

8
Yodelling In The Canyon Of Love
    ‘ I HAD A fling,’ I gushed, flumphing into Anouska’s designer sofa. So much for my little secret.
    ‘You what?’ Kate’s molars cracked on a Japanese rice cracker.
    We were at Anouska’s posh Chelsea Harbour apartment for the official present opening where, traditionally, girlfriends gather to hyperventilate over colanders and comedy oven gloves. We’d watched aghast, as an eleven-inch-high Francis of Assisi scratching a Royal Doulton dog’s nose emerged from its gift wrapping. Why is there such a complete collapse of good taste when it comes to wedding presents? Why is it that normal, sophisticated couples, collectors of Art Deco, subscribers to Interior Design magazines, suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to purchase crockery bullocks carting glow-in-the-dark sleighs or tartan egg-cups from Argos? (Argos is the place I took my friends to show them what I
didn’t
want for my wedding.)
    ‘When?’ said Anouska.
    ‘With whom?’ demanded Kate.
    ‘Where?’ they said in unison.
    ‘At your wedding. I don’t know his name. By the pool.’ I answered them in order.
    ‘What did he look like?’ Anouska pored over the wedding list.
    ‘He didn’t seem to know many people. Maybe he was a last-minute space-filler? He was tall, sexy, black …’
    ‘Black?’ Anouska exclaimed, offering pretzels from a ceramic donkey with a hollowed-out back. ‘So, is it true what they say? You know … about black men?’
    ‘What? That they have black skin?’
    ‘You know.
It
. Down
There. That
.’
    Anouska was the sort of girl who, in the heat of passion, referred to her vagina as ‘There’. And the man’s penis as ‘It’, ‘That’ or ‘That thing’. ‘Touch me there with that thing’ was really the extent of her erotic verbal repertoire.
    ‘I can’t believe you asked such a stereotypically racist question. ‘I nibbled haughtily at a pretzel before gushing. ‘Yes. It’s abso
lut
ely true! His penis is so big it’s in a separate time zone to his body!’
    Anouska squealed. ‘Balaclava or turtle neck?’ she added, boldly.
    ‘Stop. Stop this phallophilic conversation right now.’ Kate fumed. ‘Honestly, Rebecca! How could you have sex on a first encounter?’
    ‘It wasn’t a
first
date, Kate, it was a
last
one. It’s not like I’ll ever see him again, okay?’ I said, crossing one knee-high chunky-soled boot over the other.
    ‘I worry about you, I really do,’ Kate lectured me. ‘I mean, look at those rid
ic
ulous shoes. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you high heels dehumanize women. Only deer and cats walk on their toes. And that’s what you look like wearing them.’
    ‘Have you no redeeming vice, Kate?’ I asked wearily.
    Anouska passed me salt and pepper shakers in the shape of cows with big, pink udders from which the desired condiments were dispensed. ‘How could you be unfaithful to Julian, Becky?’ She primly scissored her legs. ‘At least you’ve got a man who loves you.’
    Unlike Anouska, I thought sadly. In a good marriage it takes about a month before you’re vertical for long enough to write the thank-you letters. Well, Anouska was writing hers
the day after the wedding
.
    ‘I wasn’t unfaithful!’ I waved the udder over my tomatoes and basil. ‘He only went down on me.’
    Kate and Anouska swivelled simultaneously to face me. ‘What?’ they said in prurient tandem.
    ‘We didn’t have sex. He merely yodelled in my canyon of love.’
    ‘Rebecca, since when doesn’t that count as infidelity?’ Kate demanded.
    ‘Well, that’s what
men
always say. “It didn’t mean anything. It was only a blow job.” Ask Bill Clinton. For some men even ‘sticking it in a