Dawn O’Porter - So Lucky

‘Well, at least you got her out safe,’ Maron says, snapping me out of my memory. ‘Well done you, birth is beautiful no matter how it happens,’ she continues, her young, ignorant mind speaking on her behalf.

Beautiful is not a word I would use to describe any aspect of my birth experience. I have never felt so ugly as I did in the hours that followed, either. My stomach was covered in stubble. I couldn’t breast feed Bonnie because I worried it would scratch her on the back of the head. They wanted to shave my nipples so she could latch on. I couldn’t cope with getting my boobs out in front of people anymore. The hair between them thick, the hair on them thicker. So I stopped, and asked for a bottle. Liam gave her the first feed. I just stared and watched, feeling like my entire world had been shattered. All that, just to hand her to someone else. I had already failed her in the first few hours of her life. It would only be downhill from there. My mother always liked to tell me I destroyed her body during childbirth. I don’t plan to ever inform Bonnie of the destruction she caused. There is no need to lay that guilt on an innocent child who didn’t ask to be born.

Maron lays the warm wax on my lower calf, presses the fabric down onto it, then rips the hair out of me. It’s not too bad. I know that the further up my leg she gets, the worse it will be.

She clearly cannot work in silence.

‘You OK there, Bonnie, can I get you anything?’

‘Don’t talk to her,’ I snap. ‘I don’t want her to—’

Bonnie turns around.

‘NO,’ I shout, leaping off the bed and trying to hide behind it. ‘NO, stay where you are.’

Bonnie drops my phone and when she picks it up Peppa Pig has disappeared. She screams and demands it is put back on. I can’t reach the phone. The smell is worse now she is moving around. I don’t want to come out from the other end of the bed. I can’t let Bonnie see my body. She ramps the tantrum right up, chucking my phone at the wall. It lands on the floor and I see that it is cracked. Bonnie falls to the floor and starts hammering her fists. It’s a tiny room, there are three of us in it, it’s so hot.

‘Give me a robe,’ I scream at Maron, who pulls one off from behind the door and throws it at me. I put it on, come out from behind the bed and get Peppa Pig back on my phone. Bonnie goes back into her trance. I feel ugly and ridiculous.

‘Shall we carry on?’ Maron asks softly, her awkwardness hanging in the air. But the reality hits me. I could be here for hours. Bonnie will never sit here for that long. Not with a dirty nappy. She should be potty trained, it’s my fault she isn’t. I tried a few months ago but it was awful. I don’t know when I’ll be able to face it again. I’m sure Maron is judging me for that.

‘Please get out,’ I say to her. ‘I need to get dressed.’ She does as I ask. I turn Bonnie back to face the wall and put my torn dress and thick black tights back on. One stupid wax strip’s worth of hair missing.

‘You ruined that for me,’ I snap at my child. My poor child, who didn’t ask to be here. Who is off her head on sugar, her bottom probably starting to sting. ‘Come on.’

Bonnie and I go back to reception. I strap her into her buggy, and with as much attitude as I can muster, I ask the receptionist how much I owe, accepting that I took up a reasonable amount of their time.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ says Maron, with a look of sympathy on her face. Sympathy that I do not want.

‘Do you want me to reschedule your appointment?’ the receptionist asks.

‘Is Vera coming back?’ I snap, making a point of being dissatisfied with the service.

‘No,’ she tells me.

‘Then no, absolutely not. I will take my loyalty elsewhere.’

I turn and push Bonnie out onto the street. I am still hairy and I have no childcare. This is so unbearably awful.

As I get down the street I wonder, how must that have looked? To be so afraid of my daughter seeing me without my clothes on that I tried to hide behind a bed?

Maron must think I am a lunatic.

Yet it isn’t her opinion that matters. Bonnie thinks I am cruel. I shout at her. I tell her not to look at me. I push her away emotionally, sometimes even physically, and all so I can hide inside the prison of my own body.

How is that any different to what my own mother did to me?

I’m not sure it is.

I read on the Cosmo website that love and desire are two separate things in a marriage. That love is the easy bit, but desire is the challenge when you spend a lot of time with someone. The trick is to keep desire going, and to do that you have to reinstate some mystery. A distraction from the thing they have become accustomed to. Something new that makes them see your body in a new and exciting way.

Right now, all my body is to Michael is a car crash after childbirth and a milk machine keeping our baby alive. I am functional, not sexual. Maybe all I have to do is make him look twice?

While Risky is in the toilet, I use my arms to push my boobs together and create a cleavage. I take a selfie with a seductive pout. It does not turn out how I expect it would. My boobs look lop-sided and my eyes deranged. Risky takes selfies at her desk all the time, she makes it look so easy. I try again. Even worse. My lips don’t look sexy. I look like I’m trying to scratch my nose with my mouth. I go for more of a smile, but that’s just weird. How do people make this look so natural?

‘Boss, what are you doing?’ Risky asks, coming out of the toilet. I hadn’t heard her flush. Did I miss it? Weird. Anyway, I put my phone down and give up.

‘Were you taking a selfie?’ Risky almost whispers it, like she’s discovered my dark secret.

‘I may have been.’

‘Wow, I’ve never seen you take a selfie, ever. Were you going to post it?’

‘No, I was going to send it to Michael,’ I say, sounding ridiculous. ‘But I look like a deformed butternut squash in them so let’s just move on.’

‘No way. I am the selfie queen. I’m going to teach you.’

This is ridiculous.

‘Risky, we have a high profile wedding in under three weeks. We do not have the time for a selfie masterclass,’ I say, actually really wanting to know how to make myself look sexy in a photo.

‘Tough. It’s happening.’ Risky sits at her desk and holds her phone in her hands. ‘OK, copy everything I do. Hold your phone up a bit, you’ll look thinner.’

I do as she says, and hold the camera around twelve inches higher than my face.

‘OK, now look at it like it’s just caught you masturbating but you don’t mind because you kind of want it to join in.’

‘What? Risky, come on!’

‘What? There is nothing wrong with masturbating. I just masturbated in the bathroom. So don’t be ashamed of pretending to masturbate, that’s just crazy.’

I put my phone down.

‘I’m sorry, you just what?’

‘I just masturbated in the bathroom. I do it loads at work. It gives me a burst of energy in the afternoon. It’s better than a Mars Bar, isn’t it?’

‘Better than a Mars Bar?’ Sometimes I think Risky is another species.

‘I guess so,’ I say, and I must look a little disgusted because she somehow feels the need to continue talking about masturbation.

‘Seriously, boss, we’re two women who share an office. If we can’t be open about self-pleasure here, where can we be? We need to abolish the stigma surrounding female masturbation. The silence around it has gone on long enough. I take my vibrator everywhere with me, just in case.’

‘Just in case of what?’

‘Just in case I need it. You know when you become so consumed with the need to come that you have to duck into the nearest room and bring yourself off just to get through the rest of your day?’