Free In Bed with Jocasta by Richard Glover

belly swung free. The feet saluted the sun from the deck of my blue rubber thongs.
    Now, I wrap the tie around my neck, and tighten it to the point where it’s only vaguely uncomfortable. Perfect. It’s hard not to notice how similar it is to a hangman’s noose — the free end hanging down just where the boss can easily grab it. A whole army of male commuters — each with our personalised noose. Thank God, we’re allowed to choose the colour, which is not the case in many other death-row situations. Mine’s a zany individualist yellow. How about yours?
    6.55 a.m. I eat breakfast while standing up at the sink. Between mouthfuls, enter room of older son and attempt to wake him via time-honoured method of screaming and slapping. I return to sink for further mouthful of soggy Weet-Bix, scream again at son, pack dishwasher, eat more Weet-Bix, scream at son, pack bag, then scream again at son. Two more hours of this, and at least one of us might be fully awake.
    7.05 a.m. I stand at sink, and shave. What’s the story? That the male must remove overt signs of his masculinity before entering the workplace? Glumly, I work the razor, convinced it’s all a metaphor for castration — the male worker proving himself compliant and cowered. Thus distracted, I cut myself in five places.
    8.15 a.m. I exit house, looking like Norman Gunston, and drive rapidly into nearest traffic jam. This morning it takes twenty minutes to travel one block, and another forty to reach the city.
    9.15 a.m. I rush to my desk. Following a month away, I have 176 e-mail messages, nearly all concerning an air-conditioning malfunction in the Adelaide branch office. As revenge, I e-mail all Adelaide with my views on the proper disposal of nose-hairs.
    10.05 a.m. My computer password has expired, and I can’t remember how to use the voicemail. Solving these problems takes forty minutes. I decide to leap to my death, but discover the windows are screwed into the frames. Which can only mean that someone has tried this before.
    10.45 a.m. There’s a meeting with management, with much discussion of our ‘mission statement’. The word ‘facilitate’ is also used. There must be at least one window in which the screws are loose.
    1.05 p.m. I queue interminably for a sandwich, and choose something dull and calorie-controlled because ‘I’m not on holidays now.’
    1.30 p.m. Go back downstairs and buy three chocolate bars to lift mood, since ‘I’m not on holidays now.’
    2.00-6.00 p.m. I actually do some work. Make decisions. And remember holidays in which main decision was whether to have a second beer after lunch. (The sensible answer to which, by the way, is always ‘No.’)
    6.45 p.m. I drive rapidly into traffic jam, and sit as time passes. Whole days go past getting through the inner west; governments are elected and deposed; the polar ice caps melt and refreeze.
    7.30 p.m. Fall asleep. Soon the shoulders will be hardened to the harness; the body will have forgotten there’s another way. My next holiday is only eleven months away.

4
    ‘Actually, I’m pretty sick myself,’ says Jocasta,
a day later, lying prone across the hallway,
and groaning. ‘It’s pretty close to child-birth;
I’d say eight-tenths of a child-birth. I may
need a little looking after myself.’

Cold Comfort
    Y ou’d hardly recognise Jocasta — sweeping into my room with a tray, on which was soup (the can opened by her own hand) and what she called ‘toast soldiers for my sick soldier’. There was even a flower, a rather sad-looking daisy, plonked into a Vegemite glass. It was all so utterly unlike Jocasta, I started to worry. Maybe I was sicker than I thought.
    A request that Jocasta should prepare soup is normally greeted by a hollow laugh, and seconds later a well-aimed copy of
The Universal Cookbook
will come flying though the air. Already, the children know the drill: after shouting out any food request to either of us, they momentarily duck.
    But here was Jocasta,