Not Your Ordinary Housewife

8





And so Paul returned to Australia with high hopes of a new beginning. We had a joyful reunion   and he moved straight back to Warrandyte with Shoshanna and me. I was determined to make things work; we began seeing a marriage counsellor and intimacy between us resumed. The counsellor talked of the need to spend quality time together, and we attempted to follow her advice.

Paul instantly reconnected with Shoshanna. He spoke of his pain at having been apart from her and I revelled in the notion that we were all together again. I was sure my adoption had intensified my need for family.

However, my relationship with Dory started to suffer. I didn’t want to have to choose; I thought it perfectly natural that I could have both of them in my life, but Paul had resumed his constant criticism of her. He was also not comfortable with my friendship with Susan, misconstruing her as a man-hating ‘rad les fem’. I had anticipated Paul’s aversion to her, but realised I couldn’t maintain my closeness with her and stay married. Unfortunately, I let my friendship with this wonderful woman lapse.

Paul seemed enthusiastic about his prospective art career and I was thrilled that he wanted to pursue this. But, despite his many promises to work on his art portfolio, I was having to push him. Tension started to appear again as he spent his days stoned.

Unfortunately, he had failed to gain entry into any of the graphic design courses he’d applied for. The advice was unanimous: studying would be futile as he was obviously gifted and should be able to get a job as a cartoonist. I came to the conclusion, however, that Paul was unlikely to ever be able to hold down a regular nine-to-five job working for a boss. If we were to make a go of things, I would have to accept an unconventional lifestyle.

Although I was trying to stay positive about Paul, I missed Susan’s companionship. Most of my other female friends had stopped seeing me—Warrandyte was a fair way out of Melbourne. Dory had been right about that, too. I was resenting Paul for the loss of my friends. I felt alone: not lonely—because I’d always been comfortable with my own company plus I had my darling daughter—but alone.

Paul began talking about a career in acting; according to him, Sydney was the place to be. He reasoned that he was at the peak of his physical prowess, having spent so much time working out. He’d only been back a month and I thought it too soon to move yet again, but he accused me of being an unsupportive wife. I felt he should knuckle down and find a job here, rather than chasing pipe dreams. Finally, after he convinced me there was no work in Melbourne, we agreed he’d trial going to Sydney for a few months; it would be costly and mean being alone again, but I was prepared to make the sacrifice.



Paul called me soon after he arrived, saying he’d found somewhere to live. ‘I’m staying on Oxford Street with some gay guys. It’s the heart of “Vaseline Valley”.’

I was well aware of its reputation and asked him if they knew he had a wife and child.

‘Not exactly . . .’ He hesitated. ‘But I’m getting lots of interviews and have a photo shoot booked with a magazine called Campaign Australia. I’m gonna be a gay centrefold.’

I was annoyed: he didn’t seem to be able to make up his mind about his sexuality. I thought he should tell them he was married, but Paul refused.

‘Don’t worry—I’m not gay and I’m not f*cking anyone, male or female, although there’s a considerable casting-couch culture here.’ He told me how ‘they’ all fancied him, so Sydney was where he was most likely to get employment. He thought he might get some cartoon work, too—he’d already designed an invitation for one of their parties. ‘They’re all into wine enemas,’ he explained.

‘What, they put wine up their arse?’

‘Yeah—it’s absorbed quicker through the anus than the stomach.’

I reflected ruefully after hanging up that Paul being ensconced in the gay community was the total antithesis of Shoshanna and me in Warrandyte; we were going to kiddie birthday parties with two-year-olds, while he was going to wine-enema parties with leather boys.

Within a few months Paul had made a hasty retreat home when he ran out of money and goodwill, the latter after mentioning his wife and daughter. I wondered how many more times he’d leave, and how many more times I’d take him back.

He showered me with expensive presents of leather lingerie, which angered me. ‘You know we can’t afford this shit.’ He had spent two weeks’ worth of income on lingerie he knew I didn’t even like. ‘This stuff barely fits me—it’s size 10.’ I could only conclude it was for his benefit. I was feeling pressured again to be someone I wasn’t. I wanted to be the devoted mother, not a leather-clad vamp.


‘Humour me—it’ll look great on you,’ he said, blaming my alleged penny-pinching on my Jewish upbringing. But that had nothing to do with it; I just had different priorities to him—our child, for starters.

However, Paul couldn’t forgo instant gratification for any long-term goals and I was getting increasingly frustrated. I’d anticipated that, living rent free, we’d finally get ahead, but his spending was compulsive. We argued about money and he accused me of being controlling. I knew that wasn’t true; I just wasn’t instantly acceding to all his wishes. There always seemed to be something—bigger, better, newer—he desired, whereas I was prepared to make do.

Paul began cross-dressing again, augmenting it with some lipstick and eye shadow that Saskia had inadvertently left behind; he also started buying vast quantities of porn magazines. The whole transvestite issue was upsetting me. I wanted to try and understand it, but I had no-one to talk to, besides him—and whenever I broached the subject, he clammed up. We’d been having semi-regular sex, but obviously I wasn’t satisfying him. And yet, when he was cross-dressing, I wasn’t turned on: I just couldn’t get the image of him as an unconvincing woman out of my head.

How did he see me? Did he want me to f*ck him? With what? Fingers, dildos, fists? He’d asked me for anal stimulation during some of our love-making sessions, and I found it a turn-off.

Most disturbing was the frequency with which he was self-administering cask-wine enemas; I assumed it was somehow stress-related, although perhaps it simultaneously filled a need he had for anal stimulation.



Greg phoned to say our movie had been released. We visited our local video shop and found a copy of it in the R-rated section. Paul was thrilled because it was displayed adjacent to that perennial classic, The Story of O. He even snapped a photo of me next to it. In his excitement, he took the video to the counter to show the shop assistant, who clearly doubted it was him on the cover: Paul was looking dishevelled and unshaven—nothing like the ‘pretty boy’ on the cover. I was exasperated by his attention seeking and left the shop in embarrassment.

Soon after, we stumbled across an issue of Campaign Australia in a St Kilda shop. I noticed the image of Paul first—a close-up of his face on the cover wearing a black leather cap á la the Village People. Inside was the centrefold: labelled ‘Kurt’, he was standing in the gothic arch of a church’s stained-glass window with a well-groomed German shepherd by his side. Surprisingly, he was slightly out of focus while the dog appeared in sharp definition.

Paul looked macho in leather with his G-string pouch, zippered top and studded wrist protectors. Chains and whips adorned his person and his face had a harsh, defiant quality. This was not the Paul I knew—I found his expression and the gay paraphernalia alienating and slightly menacing. Still, I supposed it was something to put on his résumé if he was to follow that career path.

But Paul was furious: he hadn’t been paid for the shoot or been asked to sign a model release form. I thought it was perhaps because he gave them his Sydney address, but he was convinced they were ripping him off. He became agitated and angry again.



Days later Paul came home with a copy of ACM, a contact magazine in which respondents paid a small fee to reply to advertisers. He suggested we answer some of the ads, perhaps placing one of our own.

I couldn’t see the point; I didn’t want to meet these people. I kept asking myself: Why did he always pressure me? Was there something wrong with me that I didn’t want the same things as him? Was I weird to only want a deep relationship with one person? Despite my earlier history of one-night stands, I saw sex as an instrument of closeness and intimacy, not an end in itself.

But I was starting to doubt myself—or rather, he was planting seeds of doubt in me. Was I the abnormal one? He kept quoting the Hite Report on Female Sexuality’s statistics on sexual frequency, suggesting that I see a doctor and get treatment for my low sex drive: medication, perhaps. He was ‘gaslighting’ me—making me think I was the problem—but I still clung to the belief that I was normal and he was not, although I had little in the way of defences against him.

Paul next suggested that we should have a threesome or swing with another couple. ‘I reckon you’d really enjoy it . . . and besides, it would turn me on to see you with another guy.’ But I assured him I didn’t fancy other men. He persisted, urging me to ‘just try it and see what happens’. He argued that we hardly went out any more and might meet some fun people.

The reality was that we stayed home because he’d alienated my friends and we could barely afford a babysitter: he was spending all our money on cigarettes, booze and porn. But he suggested we get Dory to babysit. ‘I’m sure these people aren’t all sleazy—some are bound to meet your high standards.’

‘There’s no need to insult me with personal attacks just because I don’t wanna f*ck some stranger.’

But Paul acted insulted, glibly reassuring me that it would be good for our marriage. He began following me around the house, picking fights over the fact that I didn’t want to swing. ‘We could just have same-room sex,’ he urged, but even the thought of us in such a contrived situation left me cold.

Paul had developed a sullenness that pervaded his being, shunning me whenever I tried to talk to him. Queries about his moodiness were met with terse comments like, ‘Well, don’t pretend you don’t know why I’m cross,’ and then he’d retreat to the spare room to masturbate. During dinner, he’d sit with his nose in a book as my attempts to communicate were met with monosyllabic responses. I tried to explain my feelings, but he taunted me with words like ‘wowser’ or ‘moraliser’. I knew I didn’t deserve this treatment, but I couldn’t bear the weeks of passive aggression he subjected me to.

So reluctantly I agreed to answer a few ads for swinging couples. As was so often the case, it was easier to consent to his demands than to suffer his wrath at being crossed. I knew I wouldn’t be comfortable with either of us having sex with other people, but I didn’t want to appear obstinately conservative.

He was proved correct—the dozen or so couples we met and had coffee with were indeed very ordinary people. And although I tried hard to imagine the four of us going at it—together or separately—there was no way I was going to sleep with any of them. In fact, many of the women seemed similarly coerced by pushy husbands. Some were bi; but thankfully Paul never expressed interest in seeing me with another woman.

Under duress, I agreed to attend a swingers’ party. As we arrived at the suburban ranch-style house, I was already hatching an escape plan: the babysitter’s bedtime. Inside was a motley collection of middle-aged women with fake tans and plunging décolletages mingling with mostly average blokes, who’d showered and shaved for the occasion, splashing themselves liberally with Brut 33. Like sharks circling their prey, I felt like the victim as several men moved in for the kill. Meanwhile, Paul was cornered in the kitchen by a couple of older females feeding him canapés, one in leopard-skin tights and another in a gold lamé evening dress.

After an hour I threw my babysitter excuse into the ring and told Paul I’d had enough: there was no-one there I was remotely interested in. We both left before things hotted up—assuming they did. Wishing I’d stayed home, I was upset at being bullied into this situation; Paul had wanted to stay and had given me his passive-aggressive treatment going home. Somehow I knew that this wouldn’t be the last swingers’ party I’d be pressured to attend.




The following week we got a call from Greg, who was planning another production. I hadn’t wanted to do more movies, but I remembered that Paul’s pressure abated during the filming of Let’s Make Love and I wanted to make him happy, and at least there was no sex in this one.

Called Shocking Australia (in the vein of Shocking Asia), it was to focus on the bizarre—sexually and otherwise. We spent several days shooting; locations ranged from a brothel to a clairvoyant’s rooms. Paul even spent a day filming in a dungeon in Dandenong with a dominatrix, who applied cattle prods and electric shocks to his genitals.

I was ironing when he returned from the shoot; he was exhilarated by the experience. ‘You gotta see this set-up Mistress Melba has—it’s a full-on dungeon with torture equipment. She’s really well equipped.’

‘That’s nice, dear.’ I continued folding toddler clothes. ‘I guess I’ll see the footage eventually.’

Apparently most of Mistress Melba’s clients were corporate: merchant bankers and accountants, usually highly stressed individuals who paid obscene amounts of money to be degraded. According to Paul, she didn’t even have sex with them.

‘Half her luck.’ I laughed. ‘But frankly, I just don’t get it.’

‘Me neither, but she’s booked out for months.’ Paul said she offered a service called the ‘weekend lock-up’, for which she charged a small fortune. Keeping her clients in cages, she periodically came and humiliated them, sometimes throwing a bucket of cold water on them. ‘If they’re really lucky, they’re allowed to jerk off.’

‘People pay for that?’ I asked naively. This was way beyond my life experience.

‘In droves . . . Maybe we could do something like that,’ he suggested. I was appalled, but I could see that the wheels inside Paul’s head were already turning.

Meanwhile, he proposed a joint film venture with Greg. With the working title Sick Flick, Paul would write and direct it, using only the two of us and a cameraman. The plot loosely revolved around a B& D transvestite theme—Paul was to be humiliated by being dressed in feminine clothes and f*cked.

He immediately began building a variety of bondage-furniture items. I saw a new side to him—previously, he’d always avoided any kind of home-handyman activity, but now he set about constructing these pieces with unsurpassed diligence.

The resulting furniture was both sturdy and well crafted: a medieval-style pillory, comprising hinged wooden boards for securing the head and hands, mounted on a post, and a bondage horse. This latter assemblage, similar in shape to the vaulting horse used in school gyms, had eyelets for chains and handcuffs. In addition, he designed a diaphanous dress—something akin to a tutu, which I made from pink tulle. The remaining props were items he bought in Sydney, including whips, manacles, nipple clamps and leather clothes.

Paul seemed happy in his new role. Clearly he liked to take control of projects and had a natural flair for understanding camera angles. I had only the sketchiest notion of what was required from me, and I speculated if it wasn’t perhaps deliberate on Paul’s part— he would have known I’d pike, if not for the fact that Greg and the cameraman we’d hired were there.

With no script, contrary to what Paul had promised, he seemed to just make it up as he went. The first day saw me dressing him in female clothes; after securing him in the pillory, I administered an enema, which he later voided. Back in the bedroom, I f*cked him with a strap-on, before attempting to fist him with surgical gloves and mountains of Vaseline. On day two, we swapped roles: he manacled me to the bondage horse and spanked my buttocks. Later he peed in my mouth—the most sickening and extreme experience of my life.

I was livid—for allowing myself to be dragged from one wild scene to the next, with Paul forever in charge. I felt nothing but total disgust for activities such as fisting and golden showers. I’d always prided myself on my tolerance, but this was way beyond the pale. And yet I’d agreed to participate, fearing again another bout of silent treatment and a barrage of abuse. Perhaps it was my rejection of the conventional that had started me on this path of acceptance and spiralled downwards into some of the grossest acts of which I’d ever partaken. Either way, I found it impossible to say no to Paul as he shouted me down with invectives. If he’d reduced me to tears it would have given him a visible sign of my distress, but I never once cried. I should have refused my role and somehow stopped Paul—but he was completely unstoppable, and I felt powerless to effect change.

And although he denied it, I was beginning to wonder if the movie wasn’t just an elaborate vehicle for Paul’s own fantasies— however, he assured me there was a large market for it.

Shortly after the shoot, a copyright dispute arose with Greg, who was in possession of the Sick Flick footage. I suggested we see a lawyer. We were referred to Lloyd Henderson—a highly competent legal entertainment specialist with a penchant for dabbling in movies himself.

We soon developed a rapport with Lloyd and started seeing him socially. He introduced us to potential investors. Through his contacts, we were able to join Actors Equity, who advised against signing the Shocking Australia contract and finishing the movie. With a legal letter, Lloyd obtained payment for Paul from Campaign Australia for the centrefold and cover shoot; and, after a few phone calls, he secured the return of the Sick Flick footage for a nominated sum. We were substantially out of pocket, but at least we controlled the copyright. Thankfully, neither Shocking Australia or Sick Flick was ever to see the light of day.

Despite everything, the relationship between Paul and me was outwardly stronger again. We were communicating and arguing less. But I knew why: it was always me that compromised. The pattern was established—I complied with his outrageous demands and he became the loving, considerate husband, or I stood my ground and invited long periods of unbearable hostility. I couldn’t see that I had much of a choice.