Between forty and death

Ms R is not sure at what point the stonings will kick in when she walks down the street but it must be soon. The crime of course is being over forty, something that never used to be talked about but in a youth obsessed world it seems to generate a lot of soundbites. Magazines and newspapers are awash with interviews with celebrities (women of course, men don't age) claiming "I'm fine with turning 40" or "I've never felt better." Since when did having a birthday become an illness? And as for being cool about it, well Ms R wasn't aware there was a choice. It's going to happen and therefore it really shouldn't be an issue.

The message is clear: you are really not allowed to be comfortable or have any self-esteem about getting older, unless you are wearing a Burkha.  Especially if you haven't had cosmetic surgery to correct the failings of having a birthday every year. The fact that every celebrity (I use the word as a catch all noun) is pictured looking smooth and shiny has created expectations on the part of men that have nothing to do with real women. Unless you've had your cheeks puffed up with pig's testicles a la Trudi Styler , your breasts supplemented with Swiss Balls so they ooze over your dress in the manner of Liz Hurley or Victoria Beckham or your neck injected with baby seal fat you should really be dead. Women are now open targets to be set up and knocked down at will by a society that has lost its grip on reality.

Worse still, the insistence on both youth culture and cosmetic surgery has created an environment where it is utterly forbidden for women to be happy with themselves. And perhaps it is cultural: Ms R is not English and therefore perhaps demonstrates a confidence that is not prevalent amongst women here and appears to be frowned upon (let's not get into THAT discussion about why English men are boys here). But that is the way she was brought up by a Lebanese mother in Australia where if you are not confident at work and play, you get squashed. 

Ms R is pretty happy with who she is and ironically, more so physically than anything else. It is much harder to feel you have it nailed intellectually or emotionally.  Yes, it matters to her and that is a function of her upbringing. Her standards are her own (and her mother's). Looking your best for yourself and being confident with who you are is a duty to yourself, but pandering to the unrealistic expectations of others is plain foolish. 

In the morning, don't say you love me

It's been a long time since Ms R found herself in the barren wilderness of the morning after the one night stand. There are some things you don't need to do at a certain age and trying to get someone out of your bed or sneak out of their's is not a good look in a woman of experience.

Ms R appreciates that many younger (and not so young) persons are still wandering around One Night Stand Disneyland, a world of possibilities where the only obligation is to have a good time. Problem is that while the ticket offered you unlimited rides and a whole host of characters, it has no instructions.

After all chances are you didn't mean to. He/she didn't look good at 7pm but by 9pm there were no other options and by midnight they started to look very attractive indeed. So here you are. You haven't slept because someone is sleeping in your bed and it's not a cuddly bear either. You have already asked yourself how you got here. Now you want to forget. You want to return to where you were at 7pm, clean and untainted by drink and/or desperation.

The lump in the bed is sleeping soundly and all you can think of is that you want to get those sheets in the washing machine and remove last night forever. You have already made a mistake by going back to yours.

Ms R knows how it is. However she also knows how to get rid of people. On one occasion she dialled the cab number for said gentleman immediately post sex. The man in question was not terribly interesting, there would be no orgasm before the next Halley's Comet so why drag it out. When he protested that it was Sunday, Ms R told him it was her busiest day. The cab arrived before he was dressed. "Hurry" said Ms R, "Or he'll charge you for waiting. We've finished."

It is worth having cab numbers to hand, say on the fridge. Or if you don't want them to get as far as the kitchen and you plan on having a lot of one night stands, why not make a big poster with the number on it and stick it on the opposite wall. "Oh look, there's the cab number for you. Handy eh?" They can't miss it that way. Of course this assumes you go out with people who carry cab fare.

Of course if you tend to whore yourself around town and only do one night stands when drunk, this is highly impractical. Chances are though you are also the sort of person who thinks tattoos are life-enhancing. In which case why not get a tattoo on your bottom or even between your legs that simply says "Fuck me and leave now." Sounds cruel but on reflection, it's about as close to the truth as you can get.

It's a dirty job but it's mine

Ms R has been writing sex scenes for her novel Toxic People. She knew the job was dirty when she took it but frankly didn't realise it was going to be this dirty: it's a very difficult thing to do. Even writing about a girl performing a lap-dance Ms R found herself in her living room performing the moves to see if they worked sequentially. Given that she'd ghosted a book for a stripper you'd think it would be easy. Anyway after several hours she finally figured it out and got an unexpected workout in the bargain. Win-win: the way we like to do things at Ms R Towers.

On the whole Ms R has found it is easier to write about an orgy than to write a sex scene in a bedroom, between two people who know each other. Upon discovering this she was a tad concerned. Did this mean she was, well, a bit shallow?  Had her well spent youth jumping into bed with men who were strangely without surnames (and occasionally first names) left her with a dreadful legacy? Hardly. After all Ms R can't remember most of them, ergo they don't count. 

The fact is the more fantasy-imbued the sex is, the easier it is to write, simply because you are writing about something that many people haven't done and would like to do. Plus there's a lot more purely physical description and the dialogue tends to flow. On that note, while Ms R is told she does a nice line in filthy bedtime chat, putting the stuff on paper is much harder than whispering to your lover, "Fuck me like a cheap whore in a seedy border town" or, if you're very English, "Ooh you're so naughty playing with my thingy." There is a certain type of Brit for whom 'naughty' is the single adjective associated with sex. International readers: should you find yourself with one who gets over excited using that word and is over the age of eight I suggest you move on. Last night Ms R was reading one of the competition, a certain financial book and was amused to find the banker who wrote it did not use the word 'cock' at all. Instead he used 'manhood.'  "Suck my manhood" doesn't really work for Ms R. It just sounds like hard work. 

Ms R now finds herself in the position of wishing that she'd taken notes for the last twenty odd years or so. But then perhaps the erotic madness of those moments: the strangers, the sex in unexpected places and the sheer spontaneity of it all is what you are trying to capture. Which naturally means more intense field research. Told you it was a filthy job.

Two wives, two lives and no balls

Why is it always the ugly blokes who think they're special? Brian Myerson is one of them. He's fifty, looks sixty and thinks he's thirty. You know the sort. He's one of those men who clearly thinks that money can buy can you as many lives as you want: he led two but his wife only knew about one. Surprisingly when she found out that he had another woman and child living around the corner she consulted a divorce lawyer and left him.

Brian is puzzled. He cannot understand why his wife Ingrid would do such a thing. After all he was a 'good husband'. Ms R may be able to help Brian out by pointing out that he is a liar. And stupid. He asserts that he didn't want 'subterfuge' so he told his friends and colleagues and even involved his teenage boys in his deception, but neglected to tell Ingrid. Ah, absolutely no subterfuge there then.

Of course at this point, Ms R's bright readers will be thinking how on earth Ingrid didn't know. Ms R has asked the same thing. She has only to look at a man and will know how many hours he slept and where he did it. Unlike women who are rather clever at hiding affairs, partly because men live in their own little world most of the time, men are rubbish at these things. A man who is having an affair may as well leave post-it notes around the house it is so obvious: the care he takes with his appearance, the change in his voice, the sudden excursions and, most of all, the extra attention to the woman he's with.

Maybe after twenty odd years you get cosy? But no, that's not true. Most women Ms R knows who've been married for years have seriously well-tuned antenna, sharper than that of the average girl. Maybe Brian was right in banking on the fact that his wife's comfortable lifestyle would stop her thinking about anything else? Does money make one blind?

Still what Ms R can't get over is Brian presenting himself as everyman, a loving husband and father who appears to think that his behaviour his perfectly acceptable and Ingrid is just not getting it. And now he wants to reduce her divorce settlement. Still it can't be hurting that much. Brian, you see would do it all again in one of the few heartbeats he has left. You have to wonder about Ingrid and hope that she's had some sort of awakening, albeit several years too late. But you really have to wonder about Brian and his ilk men who think that money buys them immunity. He thoughtfully point us to his role model, Sir James Goldsmith who is famously quoted as saying, "Once a man marries his mistress he creates a vacancy." Brian tells us that he sees parallels between Sir James and himself but forgets to add that Jimmy's wives knew about the mistresses. 

Ms R is not about the moral judgement here. That's Brian's choice. But what she doesn't get is that if he is unrepentant and proud of what he's done and 'would do it all again' why didn't he have the balls to tell Ingrid? Strip away the money, the jet, the cars and the bravado and you just have a gutless bloke.

Donations are happily coming in for my novel, a tale of sex, greed and hedge funders, told in Ms R fiction stylee. Do join. At $3.50 for all instalments (you can donate more if you want me to have pudding) it's better value than a Starbucks caffeine lactose solution. And there is a big pic of me on the site.