Loose Connections Read Online Free

backwards.’ 
    â€˜It’s not my fault,’ the man said. 
    â€˜I know,’ Rosemary said. While she’d been talking she’d thought of a way to improve the situation. She could fix the connection with directions from the repairman. It couldn’t be that difficult, could it? ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘you can leave any time you like, all you’ve got to do is fix the Internet connection and you can be on your way. I know that you’re sort of physically challenged at the moment but I’m not useless am I? Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. You can direct me.’ 
    The repairman was silent, so she went back to her rant. ‘The other thing about pornography,’ she said, ‘is that it dictates the sort of sex people should be having. Just the other day I was flicking through one of my daughter’s magazines. Know what I found?’ 
    The repairman was staring at his bony knees. 
    â€˜A guide on how to perform fellatio,’ Rosemary said. ‘Not your average run-of-the-mill sort of fellatio though. The kind where you take the man’s member right down into your throat. That’s the way men like it, apparently. The journalist who wrote it was a woman. She reckoned there’s a knack to switching your gag reflex off. With a little practice you can teach yourself how not to vomit on your boyfriend’s penis! My daughter’s fourteen years old.’
    â€˜I didn’t write it!’ the repairman said, voice sharp. 
    â€˜I know you didn’t write it!’ Rosemary said, annoyed. ‘I told you, a woman wrote it.’ She’d thought about writing a letter of complaint to the editor but knew it was a waste of time. They filled those kinds of magazines with sex on purpose. Sex sold, especially to teenagers, who were so curious about it. She wished now that she’d never found it. She wished she’d never been in her daughter’s room, going through her private things. She’d found her diary and skimmed the first three or four pages, another deed she was now deeply ashamed of. It was something she’d never forgiven her own mother for, until now. Standing there, surrounded by posters of near-naked men, with that wealth of secret knowledge in her hand, the diary’s blue cover plastered with love-heart stickers and band names, she just wasn’t able to resist.
    She hadn’t been looking for anything in particular, and she hadn’t found it either. There wasn’t any writing, only blue biro doodles of gargantuan breasts, like bulbous figures of eights, lying on their sides, bold dots dabbed in the middle to represent nipples. Had she been working, she wouldn’t have gone near the room. She hated the awful smell of patchouli oil that Chantelle insisted on pouring on to her bedclothes. There wasn’t a laundry detergent strong enough to get rid of it. Instead, the oil contaminated the other items in the cycle. If she didn’t spend a good fifteen minutes separating the family’s linen before a wash, the whole house smelled of it. She wondered now if there was a film or a play that she could take her daughter to see, something that would educate her about the diverse nature of breasts.
    â€˜Have you ever seen The Vagina Monologues?’ she said.
    The repairman rubbed the side of his face against his shoulder, like a sheep trying to scratch itself on a fence post. ‘Please,’ he said, mortified. ‘Stop talking about breasts and va, vag–’ He couldn’t say the word. ‘Women’s parts,’ he said finally. ‘I’m not sexist, all right? I’m all for equality. If it’s any comfort, I ran away when I saw what that woman was watching.’ 
    â€˜Did you?’ Rosemary said. 
    â€˜Yes.’ 
    â€˜But you can’t run away now, can you?’ she said. ‘You’re handcuffed to the chair.’ She