Asses on Location

On Tuesday, this being Friday, after I put on my white cotton leggings, black leotard, and matching wool leg warmers, I checked out my ass in the sliding door mirror in our dressing room. I rate asses─at the gym and as I weave my way through life. My own is just embarking on its way to bright lights and stardom, while others were either born on location or have already worked their way up. There are five mirrors off our master bedroom: Abie has a closet with a sliding set of two, as do I. And then there’s the mirror taking up the wall space above the two sinks. We had a choice, one or two sinks, and I said without hesitation, “Two, of course.” The wall-to-wall carpet is chocolate brown and the bathroom tiles mottled brown and black like the dressing room counter, only the counter has no shine to it. Most of the walls in the house are beige. Except for Josie’s room which upon her request, she was a year and a half, is morning sun yellow. Her bathroom is like the midday sun on the hottest summer day on record. And Caroline’s room is the palest frailest pink, later she chooses wallpaper with rose flowers skimming on an amethyst backdrop.

On Tuesday I forgot both daughters’ library books and swore heartily though not happily all the way home. And Abie, glued to his toilet at seven in the morning started screaming for toilet paper, “Janice. Janice. There’s no toilet paper again. I’m going to speak to Sue. Can’t you do a simple thing like replacing toilet paper? Damn it, Janice.” Sue is our housekeeper, a doll-faced curly-haired twenty-one year old from Bath. When we found out she was moonlighting in the entertainment field, we told the girls not to use the blue bathroom toilet anymore. I went around spraying Lysol, a favourite from our Montreal Bourette days when my cousin’s wife’s sister’s boyfriend visited, and without notifying us, brought along his crabs as company. I spent the weekend following him around and spraying. So when Abie called out his itemized list which included syphilis, gonorrhoea, hepatitis B and C, chlamydia, genital warts, pelvic inflammatory disease, and a few others I've forgotten even with his tendency toward repetition, I cringed and locked the blue bathroom door from the outside. “Look under the sink,” I called from the main floor foyer and flexed my legs. With strong legs you can surmount anything. Which is one reason I suggest weights.

One summer weekend at a rented Haliburton country house, Abie slew seventeen mice. “Relax, relax, I got them all,” he called out, sliding down the window of his Tornado and honking his horn a few times for emphasis before he drove off for the week, and the next morning when I found mouse shit in the oatmeal, behind the toaster, and in my apron pockets, I shrieked. I was in the country, fearing and exultantly awaiting various hoodlums to attack an unguarded mother sheltering her young daughters with one amiable Golden Retriever and a bumbling four-month old Great Pyrenees, and I was grateful for my legs. (I never thought of punching until I met Garth at Strictly Fitness and he introduced me to his psycho boxer-friend Leslie from Guelph.) Anyhow, I think Rose at the Women’s Gym on Steeles and Laureleaf is catching on. Last week I dived into a conversation she was having with Myra. Rose was boasting about being the same weight since November 24, 1952, her wedding day: “I was bigger in the boobs, though. Larry was crazy about my boobs. I wasn’t so smart, not like my younger sister, but my mother wasn’t worried because I was big on top. And after the children, I lost weight on top and put it on here,” she said, patting her impressive rear. “And Larry doesn’t mind, he just grabs a little lower.” Which got me to thinking about my ankle weights.


I’m a sharing nymphomaniac. So I flexed my biceps, showed off my quads, and even did the old pec pose with that fancy two-thirds body twist. Rose laughed. My nose got red as it does when my heart becomes involved. The following week Rose paraded through her workout with two-pound velcro weights around her ankles. Muscles thrill me. You work and build them up. There’s nothing existential about muscle. Abie says I’m becoming a jock which I take as a compliment. So now I’m out boozing and wrestling with the best of them. The truth is I hate beer and generally I can’t stand the rest of them. I like staying home and getting stoned and telling jokes and laughing with my girls. Although lately I’ve been talking with the women in the sauna and listening to dialogue. Sometimes I get dressed up and go dancing with Abie. I wear black high-heeled boots, my black body suit under a white Egyptian cotton shirt with a wide silver studded cinch belt, a white and black beaded choker, matching earrings, dark brown eye-liner, and emerald green eye shadow. I leave my hair long. Abie raises his eyebrows when I walk downstairs. Once I paraded downstairs and slipped on the green shag carpet that hides missing or loose pieces of the parquet floor. There are some things you have no control over.