Stranger Things Have Happened

It was nearly midday on my day off and I had yet to do even one constructive thing. I tried to write but nothing would come. I read new age magazines for inspiration, and still nothing came. I even bought Coldplay's new single Viva la Vida from ITunes, and listened to it over and over, letting the images flow in my head so that I could form a story or my next chapter from that. And I have come to the conclusion that I love their new song, without reserve. It carries me away and fills me with a sense of nostalgia and longing, makes me want to run through grassy meadows and laugh and play and rough house.

But nothing came of it.

Ye gads.

The roses need pruning though. I love roses, even though for me, like most other people, roses inspire visions of old ladies who wear flowery nylon house dresses and large cane hats, and drink Earl Grey from rose covered tea cups on their patio in the afternoon, while they sat at their quaint little round wrought-iron chairs and tables that are only big enough for two - usually just them and their husbands, to whom they have been married to for forty years. Sometimes they sit alone, but, I'm sure that if I asked them, they'd say they had been married for decades before their partner - well - you know.

I'm probably getting a bit morbid here.

I try to distract my thoughts by letting my eyes settle on a rather mangy cosmetics catalogue that has been sitting out in the rain ever since it was left it on my outdoor table. I told the lady who delivers them that I don't want them, but she doesn't pay any attention. It's not that I don't like what she sells, I love it and I love the little catalogue too. I love the little samples and the book always smells so nice! It's just that if I smell it, I will end up with a migraine that usually takes days to get rid of and if I use the samples, my skin breaks out in a rash that looks more like a burn. Sometimes, when I feel like living on the edge, I rub my wrist on those little round fragrance things they have on the pages and I use the samples. It never ends well, so I won't go into it any further, other than to say that I'm allergic to just about everything, and not just the cosmetics catalogue.

I'm allergic to food colouring, preservatives, fragrances, aerosols; even the chemicals that natural foods produce, like salicylates in bananas and amines in chocolate for example, and I have to say - or ask - how ridiculous is that? Honestly, the only compensation for suffering PMS every month was being able to drown my sorrows in chocolate! And you know what they say about eating chocolate; one kilogram produces enough of the exact same endorphins in the brain that having an orgasm does.

That's it. Now I'm on a downer and it's not Coldplay's fault this time. It's the unwitting revelation that I am not privy to enjoy anything that will produce the spine tingling sensation in my spine that only chocolate or a man can give. Well, I can do it myself; I suppose, with necessity being the mother of invention and all that. I didn't invent the dildo sadly. It would be good if I did though. I would be so rich that there would definitely be a cure for food and chemical intolerance by now.

Oh great, now I feel selfish. I'm obviously not one of those magnanimous people who shave their heads to find a cure for cancer or something as equally devastating to people's lives as that. I kind of like my waist length light brown curls too. At least, I do once I wring the spirals out of them with the straightening tongs. Instead of wanting to alleviate the suffering of my fellow man, I'm fantasising about spending billions of dollars on research so that I won't be allergic to chocolate and men any more.

Woah! Le gasp!

Did I say that? I'm allergic to men?

Was that a Freudian slip? Or was that my subconscious latching on to what really ails me? Stranger things have happened, I suppose.

No, surely not.

A woman cannot be allergic to men! It's impossible. I mean, lots of people are allergic to preservatives and additives, but it's only now, forty years after they were introduced in the 1960s that the powers that be are starting to recognise it. Men, on the other hand, have been around since, well, since the ancestors of human kind first developed the ability to pinch their index fingers and their thumbs together.

Apparently, that's all that separated human kind from our ape-ish kin. That solitary, small motor movement that enabled us to develop and use tools, which in turn, allowed us to eat things that expanded our brains and gave the process of our evolution a stiff dose of speed, equivalent to that of a can of Red Bull with a Borroca vitamin dissolved in it. Which, by the way, I am allergic to as well.

So, human kind's ability to develop tools that expanded their brains resulted in the invention of the mighty dildo!

I hope I didn't say that out loud. Still, that thought tickles me. The difference between apes and men comes down to the fact that mankind worship dicks so much that some bright spark thought to make an effigy of them! Like some ancient civilisation, we make idols venerating our gods.

All hail the mighty phallus, hear hear!

Unless of course, we are allergic to them, that is.

No, that's ridiculous. There is no such thing as a cock allergy.

- Just allergies to the beings they are attached to -

NO! Shut up, inner dialogue! You've already taken all the fun out of my life. I'm firm on this one, there is no such thing as a cock allergy!

Firm on the topic of cock allergies? Excuse the pun.

Oh just shut up, seriously, you mad twat!

"I beg your pardon?"

Oh shit! I said that out loud!

I forgot that there was a crew of tradesmen working for my elderly neighbour, Marge. They've been next door for the past week, repairing her fence after some stupid seventeen year old got drunk and decided to take his father's car for a joy ride while his parents were in Sydney on a business trip. At one in the morning, I heard a screech that sounded like a jet flying over head at telegraph pole height, and then a huge rumbling crash shook my house. I thought my roof was being torn off in a Tornado; the sound was so long and thundering and well, violent really.

I took a calmative for my nerves and ever the civic minded individual, I ran out the front door to check for damage. My small courtyard was covered in a billowing cloud of dust and debris. Bricks were strewn everywhere, and the roots of Marge's rose bushes trembled feebly in the aftershock of being ripped so suddenly from the ground. The driver had completely taken out Marge's brick fence! A forlorn wheel rolled along the footpath and spun to a stop in my driveway. It looked as though I'd won a holiday in Iraq - after the invasion - and I stood amid the carnage in a petrified state of shock and awe.

Marge was already outside, the picture of calm. Once she had established that the driver wasn't on death's bed, she proceeded to heap a mouthful of abuse on him with her thick, cutting Irish tongue. It was the goriest thing I have ever seen in my life. When I was an undergraduate, I studied the works of a feminist historian who claimed that the reason Australian men in the early 1900s had little or no respect for Australian women (and some would argue that nothing has changed much - not me of course, just some), was because the generation of colonial born in our sunburnt country from their convict parents, lacked the extended family network of their ancestors back in the old country. Namely, we didn't have the strong Irish grandmother to keep our wild colonial boys in check. To be truthful, even though I respected the Professors work incredibly, I thought that conclusion was a little simplistic.

I take that thought back now, though, after watching our wild, drunken offender scramble into the safety of the Police's caged paddy wagon, just to escape from Marge's tirade of scolding. It was so brutal that those of us present without the stomach to cope had to turn away.

Old Albert, the widower who lives on the opposite side of the street, ran to Marge's front yard as did most of us who live on King's Court Road. There, he kept us entertained in the wee hours with the entire history of the neighbourhood for the past forty years while Elsie, who lives two doors up, supplied the tea. Albert knows everything that has ever happened to anyone on this street, names, dates-the lot. He'd probably even know when preservatives were first introduced to the residents of our royally named road.

At the ripe old age of seventy-two, he has a mind like a whip and the memory of an elephant. He can actually stick to a topic without running off on bizarre tangents that basically, really don't have much to do with anything at all - unlike me. He told those of us who were gathered around the toe-truck driver, who was removing the remains of what was once a beautiful black XR-8, that another drunk driver had done exactly the same thing that the modern version of the wild colonial boy had, only eight years earlier. Albert had looked pointedly at the thankfully uninjured youth in question as the police closed the back of their paddy wagon behind him, mainly to protect him from Marge.

Although, we all thought that Marge could be the lesser of two evils, once the youth's father found out what he had done to his car. In the days that followed, once the stiff suited insurance assessors had evaluated the damage, Marge revealed to me with great pomp and splendour, standing on the top of the old milk crate that she used as a podium so she could converse with me over what remained of her fence while I hung my washing out, that the total bill of the damage that the boy had caused was over thirty thousand dollars. I gasped, much to her nodding self satisfaction. The kid was going to be dead meat when his father got his hands on him. Not to mention the courts. He was going to get done like a dog's dinner, as Albert would say.

"Did you say something?"

I jumped, startled.

Oh that's right; someone spoke to me because I said something out loud. I couldn't even remember what it was. I hoped it wasn't embarrassing but knowing me and how boring I can be, it was probably about the colour of this season's new variety of rose anyway, which had been developed to celebrate some distant royal in some far away country that I would probably never get the chance to see. I'd probably be allergic to it.

"Missus?"

I blinked.

A man was peering at me over the fence.

My hand flew reflexively to my throat, but thankfully, I still had the presence of mind to stop it before it pinched my nostrils closed - ever conscious of an allergic reaction as I am. It probably would have been a bit rude, as though I thought the man stunk or something. He didn't smell, well, he did smell, but like deodorant, not sweat...even though he was sweating. So much so that I could see his sun bleached hair was darker underneath where it was wet. His face was covered in a layer of cement dust and it looked as though his hair had been plastered to his forehead at some stage, and he had swiped it away with the back of his filthy hand. Despite the ghostly coating of building dust that he sported, only a blind person wouldn't be able to see that he was stunningly gorgeous.

He lifted his heavy brow, looked pointedly at me with the most amazing aqua coloured eyes I have ever seen, and nodded his head slowly as though to encourage me to answer.

I blinked again, because I'm such a colourful personality and not boring in the slightest…I felt a migraine coming on. I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and my index finger to ward it off.

See? I'm interesting. I can find new and creative ways to use the simple movement that lifted our species from the squalor of ape-dom!

He snorted and looked at me as though I was an idiot. He was probably right.

"Uh. Okay... Sorry to disturb you. I thought you said something." He said in a tone of voice that clearly implied that he thought I was loopy.

Say something you rude woman!

Like what?

I don't know! Ask him if he wants a cup of tea or something.

He is a concreter, and everyone knows that tradies don't drink bloody tea, they drink beer!

Then offer him beer!

I don't drink beer! I'm allergic to it! And you know that! What bloody good is an inner voice that doesn't know jack shit?

The hunk ...I mean... the man, disappeared from my sight behind Marge's six foot high fence, but not before I saw he was wearing no shirt and had the broadest shoulders I had seen in a very long time, if ever. Not that I had ever seen that many. Albert tended to always wear a white singlet under his button-up cotton shirts, thank God. The appreciative groan that had been welling in my throat, died instantly at the thought of Albert sans shirt, and it crawled back to the dark pits from whence it had come.

I bit my lip with frustration and flapped my hands so frantically under my wrought iron table that my rose patterned tea-cup of Earl Grey jiggled and sloshed onto the matching saucer. It was hot and it spilled over my thumb, scalding it when I picked up the silver teaspoon it had spilled into. I popped my finger into my mouth to cool it. It bloody well hurt! At least the pain had taken my mind off the 'man', his shoulders and my complete lack of personality.

I felt a warm fat body rub against my legs, followed by the sensation of said warm, fat body purring. I could think of other warm fat things and the wobbly knee sensations they would give me. Yeah, like that's gonna happen.

"Hello Heathcliff." I said, reaching down to stroke his thick golden fur.

I smiled, even though I was frustrated and depressed. My cat always made me smile, he was such a wimp. He was constantly getting stuck on the roof and meowed like crazy until I rescued him, but at least he was beautiful.

"Nice cat." Said a voice that made my knees go wobbly - eep! I hadn't expected that.

I blinked and swallowed hard. The man was back! I felt a sudden urge to go to the toilet…

I cleared my throat. "Um. Yes, he is lovely."

Ohhhh well done, Miss Personality!

I tried to smile but when I looked at the offending man, leaning over a part of the broken fence, and saw him smiling at me and my cat with those amazing aqua eyes, well, let's just say that it's lucky that Heathcliff sensed he was in danger of being dropped!

He dug his claws through the thin cotton of my dress to save himself, and they pierced the tender skin of my stomach…

"Ow!" I screeched, and promptly dropped the bundle of golden fur.

Oops! Maybe it wasn't so lucky…Heathcliff glared at me and scooted toward the driveway and under my car. No doubt he was going to hide in his favourite spot, on top of the tire under the wheel arch. I hate it that he likes to sleep there, and I live in constant fear of running him over.

I clicked my tongue and made a sound I could only achieve when I was unconsciously expressing regret and exasperation at the same time. I was regretful that I'd dropped my cat, and exasperated as well because I knew he would now hide from me in the hardest to reach places until he deemed I had been sufficiently punished. Damn.

I buried my hands in my hair to keep it from blowing all over my face. I usually tie it back but I'd just washed it and if I didn't leave it down to dry, it stayed wet and made my head itchy.

"He'll make you pay for that." The man said in a low rumbling voice that made my bones feel like jelly.

I turned suddenly to face him, and was painfully aware that it was obvious to all who saw that he had startled me. In all honesty, I'd forgotten he was there in the face of my feline dramas, but there he was! In all of his sun-kissed, aqua-eyed glory, leaning over Marge's fence and staring directly at my tits, which were jutting out proudly because of the position my arms were in.

My tits!

Remembering the small but horrifying fact that I hadn't put a bra on after showering, stunned me from the dangerous moment where I'd nearly lost myself in adoration of He Who Held the Sacred Penis.

I dropped my arms from my hair and crossed them over my chest. My cheeks heat immediately after. I couldn't tell if I was mortified more because I had caught him staring at my braless chest, or because I had crossed my arms over myself so obviously that it made him uncomfortable, as though he'd been caught perving, which really, he had.

I bit my lip, trying to distract my hardening nipples with pain, to stop them from poking out to say hello to the man who'd summoned them like some evil magician. I really needed to go to the toilet now. No, I just wanted to get inside and close my door behind me, any excuse would do. In fact, I wanted it so bad that it was all I could do not to start crying.

What the hell? Inner dialogue! Stop sulking and talk to me!

Quick, run inside!

Great help you are.

"You alright?" The man asked. "Did he scratch you?"

I nodded and headed for my door, mumbling, "Yes, but I'm fine, thanks."

"Are you sure?"

Stop you crazy woman, and answer him like a normal person for the love of chocolate!

I stopped. I'd already angered my cat. I didn't want to piss my inner voice off too.

"Yes, I'm fine." I forced myself to look at him while I answered, "It's just that my cat does stupid things when he gets cranky."

The man laughed and the sound sent shivers all over my back. Maybe it was just my spine but I couldn't be sure because sensations I'd never felt before were jarring over my entire body. I must have eaten something that didn't agree with me. My head was swimming and I was having palpitations.

"Birmans are like that." He said, conversationally.

I looked at him sharply, surprised. "Yes, they are, and he is especially bad I think but don't quote me on that. I've never had a Birman before. I think it mustn't be all that common a breed because most people correct me when I say he is a Birman, and say 'don't you mean Burmese'? I'm surprised you …even...know the breed…"

Yay, first you say nothing to him and then you don't shut up!

I ended abruptly and looked down at my hands to hide the red I just knew my face would be. I wish I had olive skin like the rest of my family, who looked like bronzed gods straight from a book on Athenian art and rarely blushed. I was the only one who inherited pink toned skin - probably because I was a 'change of life babe' and had thrown back to some distant relative. And, as my family delighted in telling me, my fair skin was…well, it was just un-Australian!

Ramble ramble, focus woman!

"My ex bred them, Birmans that is." The man said, not seeming to have noticed my complete lack of social graces. "Let me know if he gets himself stranded somewhere you can't reach and I'll come grab him for you."

I looked up at him and blinked my surprise. "Oh okay. Thanks…?"

He winked at me and smiled. His berry coloured lips pulled back against startlingly white, straight teeth. He looked liked a surfer, how they have that beautiful bronze skin that really makes their teeth stand out. I suppose it wouldn't matter even if their teeth were really yellow, all that sun and salt water would probably bleach them to magazine model whiteness. His teeth looked like that and for a moment, his smile even outshone his amazingly unusual eyes which I couldn't help but notice had the thickest, blackest lashes that I have ever seen on a man or a woman. They made his eyes look even more sea-green, or ocean-blue. I'm not really sure what the correct name is for the colour. I usually just call it aqua -