Rose Leopard Read Online Free Page A

hordes of calorie-challenged troglodytes
    ii) occupying the same evolutionary rung as an amoeba
    iii) professionally emasculated and emotionally disembowelled.
    Tedium, insignificance, no nuts or guts. You can’t ask for more than that. Demented goldfish led more exciting lives than I.
    It was Kaz who changed me.
    â€˜You want to write?’ she asked. ‘So resign. Resign, and write.’
    â€˜The money?’ I remember protesting weakly. ‘Mortgage, expenses, bills, insecurity … ?’
    â€˜Sadness,’ she sniffed. ‘A complete lack of fulfilment. Vince, most people work for around forty years and that is far too long to be unhappy. Jesus, what’s the point in spending the most productive years of life in a state of catatonic misery? Piss the job off now, or I’ll leave you. Oh, and make sure you dedicate the first book to me, okay?’
    All her best qualities, I thought, rolled into one — care for others, empathy for their desires, decisiveness, perception, the ability to swear freely and with panache. How can you not love someone like that?
    Love Kaz, love words, always have. Words are enticing: playthings, challenges, mysteries. Once, when we were courting, I was wrestling with her on the floor of her parents’ lounge-room. I was twenty-two and horny; I reached beneath her skirt and touched silk.
    â€˜Hm,’ I muttered. ‘What secrets lie within?’
    â€˜New undies’ she told me, closing her eyes and smiling. ‘Do you like them?’
    But my mind, ridiculously undisciplined thing that it is, was darting elsewhere.
    â€˜Undies,’ I told her, ‘is such a Westie kind of word. Totally blue-collar. Saying or wearing undies is like kicking a beer can along a gutter. I mean, only people from the poorer suburbs wear undies. Drive an old Toyota with bog-marks, drink VB long-necks, wear undies.’
    â€˜Such a snob! Okay, if they’re not undies, what are they?’
    I paused, rubbed my nose, took in the faint whiff of her.
    â€˜Not panties ,’ I said. ‘Too delicate. Virginal. Abandon hope all ye who enter, for ye shall be stuck here unto eternity.’
    â€˜I agree. Panties is such a numbing word. Linguistic anaesthesia. Mothers buy panties for their daughters.’
    â€˜And for their sons, occasionally. How about knickers?’
    She shook her head vigorously.
    â€˜Don’t ask me why, but knickers always sounds sort of dirty to me’
    â€˜I agree. It’s the double K. Most words with a double K are dirty. Kacky, kookaburra, kink.’
    â€˜Kiosk?’
    â€˜A filthy café. What about underwear? ’
    â€˜Too much like a K-Mart catalogue. Jocks? ’
    â€˜Male and macho. Jocks point out at the front — yours don’t. I know … pantalettes’ .
    â€˜Be serious!’
    â€˜It was a very popular word a couple of centuries ago! Coy and classy. Like bloomers.’
    â€˜I do not wear bloomers.’
    â€˜Drawers?’
    â€˜Do they open and shut? Do they have handles?’
    â€˜Duds?’
    â€˜Too Army. GI Joe puts on his duds .’
    â€˜ Underclothes?’
    â€˜What my grandmother would say. God, I can hear it now: Katherine, have you finished ironing your underclothes ? Katherine, fold your underclothes before your grandfather sees them.’
    â€˜You iron them?’
    â€˜No, she thinks I iron them. Anything for the sake of peace.’
    â€˜Smalls?’
    â€˜Ah, the blessed 1950s. Holdens, pig-iron Bob … and smalls .’
    We stopped then, reconsidered.
    â€˜You know’ I told her eventually, ‘this is good. It’s good — comforting — that we can talk about my fetishes like this.’
    â€˜Fetishes?’
    â€˜I have a fetish for women’s … undergarments. They fascinate me. It’s the promise thing, I think. The lure of what lies beneath — like seeing a freshly cooked burger still in its