Sunday Windy Sunday - A Good Day For Washing The Clothes & Remininiscing

Ahhhhh - the sun is out, the sky is blue, there's not a cloud to spoil the view, but it's raining.......raining in my heart.
Nah, course it's not.
That was just Buddy, 'Raving-On'
My heart is ticking away in full, resplendant Sinus Rhythm, at around 78 beats per minute, or 'normally' should you prefer - sure, there's just a little heart-ache present, but I'm only human.
It is, though, as windy as a bastard here in Melbourne's SE burbland, and the washing machine is on it's 2nd cycle already, with clothes on the line from the first all but dry after what has been only 30 minutes. There's sure to be a 3rd on the way.
One simply cannot complain about that - it really is a good washing day.
My wonderful wife does love to wash clothes, and it's so much more than simple home duties that's going-on here. It's close to an addiction, and one I've seen several times before in others.....but one I see as quite harmless, this compulsion to wash clothes, and to derive massive pleasures from doing so - harmless, for sure, and all part of the 'nesting' instinct we all have (well, some of us have) once one has factored-in things like exponential rising power and water costs.....it'll only take laundry powder to rise in price and we'll be shafted good & proper.
It'll be back to the old dolly tub and wash-board, or down to the river, thrashing the clothing upon the stones.
Amongst other things, and in another life, I can picture a scenario where I simply grab a new pair of Calvin Klein jocks every few hours and throw the old ones in the bin, no matter that they are only a few hours out of the packet, and maybe only farted-in once, David Beckham-Style......   all of this post lottery win, of course.
How amazement, to simply thow away the shirt once it gets a little grimy, or change the Ferrari once the ashtrays begin to fill-up a bit or the colour of the full-grain leather interior begins to bore one a little.
I could instead, though, be married to a woman who had no time or desires for such mundane tasks as washing clothes or good housekeeping, and I was, once - if choices needed to be made, at gunpoint, I would stay put on the washing side of things and on many other levels, and never allow myself to forget that I am an extraordinarily fortunate man to have my family as it stands - to have my amazing wife and daughter. I only need a bit of reasonable health, a relocation to Port Douglas (yes, yes....a recurring theme) and a few bob, and I'll have the set. Is it really to much that I ask here? (Rhetorical for the most part - although I do, sometimes, think that it is too much that I ask - do I really need to say, again, that all I want is a better life-style for those that I love - maybe it's simply my own dreams and aspirations, not necessarily those of my loved ones, and this is where the truth lays - of course, only a short sojourne to the Far North will put this sucker to bed properly. I may be stupid, but I'm no fool )
Like the enjoyment of having a few coffees, I am quite wrong to expect others to derive the same pleasures as I - if only it didn't leave that little bit of disappointment that they don't - something I must learn to live with, but I digress.
For the moment, my beautiful wife is on the phone to a friend, a Chinese one, since the words are all meaningles to me and in Mandarin, and this may well take some hours, as they discuss the merits, benefits and downsides to the likes of Elephants & Toothpaste, the fighting in the Middle East and Julia Gillard's ever-tenuous grip on the top job here in the Land Of Oz.....wait a moment, now she's on the phone to another for more of the same, followed by yet a third......busier than a one-armed cab driver with crabs, and one mobile phone is barely enough, it seems. I hope to God that this latest research into damage caused by mobile use is erroneous, for many of us.
Away from the dark and forboding stuff though - soon enough, and in true Sunday-Style, the sound of the Dyson will break the peace, as it thunders through the entire home, waking-up the sleeping daughter as ridiculously early as mid afternoon, and sucking-up all in it's path as strongly and as efficiently as a sucking-up thing. My gorgeous wife at the helm will see to it that no bit of fluff remains, no speck of dust hides skulking under the sofa. She is, in fact, far and away the absolute cleanest woman I have ever known, squeakily so, and on every level I can think of - I feel sure our daughter will follow in her footsteps, once the boys start to visit our home, those that get past me waiting at the door with a big bat....and I don't mean the bats with the obscenely large 'much more than they need & then some' genitalia that enjoy eating fruit and masturbating a lot, either. A good friend, who knows full-well who he is, has a genuine riot police baton from his days as a man of the force, a black, compact thing of immense beauty that flicks-out to full extension so rapidly, and is as heavy as all buggery - a real damage inflictor of the finest kind, and I can see now, very clearly, my close scrutiny of the impressive X-Rays of anyone in it's wake, with collarbone shattered beyond repair plus or minus a depressed skull fracture just above the ear as said baton came crashing down to 'do the double'........and I may well be asking him for a lend of it if ever that long queue of acne-riddled young men start to form down the street, as can happen where very attractive young and sexually eligible young women are concerned.
Just for dissuasion, you understand - I'd never use it, unless I needed to.
Having already had the discussion with my daughter re: this potential for tragedy, she has, in principal, agreed to withold her virginity until at least her mid-30's, to go some way toward averting these menacing issues that lay just around the corner. It's good to be able to talk with my daughter about such matters, and not simply current affairs, her math homework or how she needs to work as hard as she possibly can....the usual stuff. Sends a real shiver down my spine just thinking about it all, notably how close it all is, the boy thing. (that said, she seems to have developed a crush on Viggo Mortensen, via his portrayal of Aragorn in Lord of the Rings - could this be the 'most girls want to marry their Daddy thing at work - Pffft.....I wished. Apparently, Viggo insisted upon doing all his own stunts in the movie, and is a far healthier specimen than I've ever been)
Thinking back to my own youth, along with queueing - I don't ever recall having to actually queue for it.....au contrere.....and you'll think that I'm simply boasting and having a lend of you all here, but 'It' used to queue for Me - one of the better perks of being a grossly heterosexual male nurse back in the early 80's, living amidst a nurses home chock full of hundreds of women, most of whom were extremely attractive along with the added bonus of being grossly not in the slightest lesbian - mostly.
Nothing whatsoever related to my endowment, I hasten to add, since I fall right in the middle of 'Average European Male' in that particular department.
I have not had a single complaint, though, hand on heart, in spite of the obscene numbers involved, and I really do say, with some regret, that they are obscene - more on that to come.
Shooting fish in a barrel as a reality, not an analogy, would have been very hard by comparison. There was only one other male nurse in the entire city - back then, males would tend to go into Psychiatric Nursing - the pay scales were better and promotion ladder much faster - it was a minefield to try and do what I did, be a male nurse in a female dominated to bits profession (and more of that in another story, too) - the other male was the proverbial as gay as a handbag full of butterflies, and so I was very much alone with my heterosexuality - it was all rather novel for the system to have Me in there - it was essential that I stood out, worked extremely hard and got myself noticed for all of the right reasons, and I did, at least at first. I over-learned, became a super-knowledgeable uber-nurse of excellence - it sat well with most, but of course, not with all.
But back to me.....now divorced and living-in at the nurses home, 1984-ish
I had a mate back then, who would come over to visit me in my room at the nurses home occasionally, for a beer and a smoke or several and some good music, and I can see him now, sitting on the floor, spliffing-up and shaking his head in complete wonderment, smiling in semi-anger as we got more and more stoned, as he stared longingly and with increasing disbelief and envy at the young and very attractive woman in her night-wear - a student nurse - draped on my bed behind me as I sat on it in front of her, with her waiting there patiently until he and I had finished whatever it was that we were doing. This was an almost weekly occurence, his visit. It was almost always a different young lady each and every time he came over - only ever for a couple of hours, until, at the behest of said lady on my bed, it was indicated that it was now, very much 'time for him to leave'.
I remember these days with so much fondness but also, surprisingly, with more than a little sadness - why the sadness, I hear you say, with wall to wall beautiful women on-tap?
Well.......To give you more of an idea, paint even more of a vivid picture, there would be very few mornings indeed where I would not stir to find a woman climbing into bed with me, one who had just come-off night shift at the hospital - it didn't matter, either, if there was one already in there with me, as she, quite often, needed to go off for the morning shift in just a little while - this particulr incarnation was usually when I was on my rostered days-off, or was working some sort of odd shift etc. It wasn't always for outright sex, just for that closeness, the skin on skin that feels so wonderful, warm and comforting, and to fall into that most blisful of sleeps with someone in your arms. It was love in it's mildest form, openly shared without any more committment than the willingness of the act and of the participants that did it - it was such an incredibly beautiful thing, this side of it all, something I still think of and treasure. Many times, this was all that was needed by both she/they and myself, and 'she' was one of at least 8 or 10 that come immediately to mind. There were many, many more than this that my mind has forgotten the names of, so many more........whilst at other times, it was total debauchery, including but not limited to threesomes and other variants - the only common factor was that I was the only guy in the equation......it was the height of gorgeous, sensual pleasures and a truly amazing 18 months or so.......and I really was in Heaven, for the most part.
Who needed parents?
I was well liked, and extremely well-loved in every way, emotionally and physically, but something was wrong, very wrong.
What, then, made it a bad thing?
Well, one cannot continue to do this, no matter the many never-ending pleasures, for with pleasure can come pain, and the pain of it all, for me, was that I was something of a male whore...that is, I was beginning to feel, in my mind.....No, that's a complete joke.....I was much, much more than 'something' of a male whore.
Sure, these women really did love me, and loved me for who I was, taking pleasure from my company in many other ways than simply the physical, sexual manner, but in the end, I was starting to feel a deeper and deeper sense of my being simply 'available' for the pleasure of these women.
I really do know how very stupid this all may sound, especially to any male, but this was the way of things, such as they were. This seemingly idyllic existence had a price to pay.
I did go-on to tell the aforementioned mate this stuff, but it did little to appease him from feeling that life had cheated him of his fair and equitable share of shagging, whereas I had been given some kind of very large, leader of the pack 'lions share'.....his share and several other men's share, as well as my own.
He wasn't entirely wrong, but he simply couldn't see the down side, just as you may be struggling to see it right now.This feeling became so intense for me eventually - that I was being 'used'.....and I really was, ultimately. Also, I had gained something of a reputation within the hospital for this side of my extracurricular activities - it wasn't easy in any event to be a male nurse back then, unlike now where there are many, many more, gay and otherwise. My professional abilities were called into question - those at the top with real power made my working life difficult.....possibly jealousy at work here, and a great many of those responsible for this were, in fact very high up the ladder nurses, who had only arrived there due to never having married and/or had children etc........yes, folks, they were lesbians.....and before you go saying I am bigotted or discriminatory etc, some of my very best friends have been gay or lesbian (and now I see a very different picture being built-up in your minds!!)
Needless to say....I was a very excellent Staff Nurse - a 'Mister Sister'.............running a very busy acute Children's Medical Ward but running rapidly out of respect amongst the elders at the top with real power within the system - I couldn't fight them, there were too many of them, and they wanted me gone.
Something had to be done.
The debachery, the sexual overkill, it's pleasures and it's pains, along with the constant and ongoing attacks upon my professional integrity, in the end, caused me to leave it all behind & relocate, to change tack a little.
I also very much was beginning to feel the need for one person with whom I could bond completely - as free and liberated as my life has been, from what was a very early age for losing my own cherry (a tad over 14), I have always, really, only wanted one, special person in my life......it's been finding The One that has been my own Holy Grail, but that's another story entirely, for the most part.
As for my then predicament, back in 1984 - It was not to be the last time that I would need to 'run away' and reboot my life.
This next part of my life journey was to take me to the Home Counties, a spit and a stones-throw to London.....to Hertfordshire and a beautiful little village called Cuffley.
It was 1985.
I appplied for and succesfully gained employment with an outrageously wealthy German family. They lived in what was a huge mansion, with wood panelled walls throughout, walk-in fridges, and suits of fucking armour, huge broad-swords and all manner of medievil artifacts (all of them the genuine article, not replicas) all over the place, on the wood panelled walls etc - the home was huge, gigantic and a mansion in every sense of the word.
I had my own room and the freedom of the joint, indoor pool and all, but more of that later.
My role was to take total physical and emotional care, additional to being a companion and friend, 6 days a week, including on-call night-time duties if needed, of their 21 year old son, who had broken his neck whilst at the wheel of a motor car way too powerful for such an inexperienced young man as he.
As is still so often the case with young men and, increasingly & tragically, young women these days, he had wrapped it around a very large tree at high speed. His family's wealth and their consequent spoiling and ruining him to bits had been his salvation, saving him from certain death and 'Goodnight Vienna'.
Airbags were not quite so commonplace back then, and that's an understatement, but his Mercedes was equipped with one or 2, and it was this that had saved him, albeit paralysed as a paraplegic with no use of anything below the belly button ever again, at the tender age of 18.
He was very amply built, now 20 years old, a good 6 feet 6 inches in height, and whilst not grossly overweight, was very stocky and heavy. I was now his full-time nurse amongst other things - I had to quell my natural and very British instincts of disliking 'The Germans', and just get-on with it, since I was surrounded by them through every fault of my own - through my choosing, in fact.
It was to become a very full year of very hard and demanding but rewarding work- a very different and new kind of life, and one I shall describe as completely as I can next time......if you're still there.
But let's see if that second load of washing is dry yet.