Stellar: The Boob Job

I’m partly ashamed and partly proud to admit I’ve made an Olympic sport out of talking my way out of sticky situations.  Waking up beside a stranger whose name I’ve misplaced, forgetting significant birthdays, I have over the years honed an ability to skip around social calamities with the grace and artistry of a Spanish matador.  It’s a gift.  But when you’re caught in a bar feeling another girls’ chest and your new wife walks in, well, even the bull wins once in a while.  But please, allow me to explain.

I was in a karaoke joint with some of my core group of friends: Ciara, Meg, and my friend Paul, who’s gay.  Paul had just finished performing the 5ive megamix for us (or at us depending on your point of view) and we were taking a break with some sake.  Meg had recently had her boobs done and so it’s pretty much all we talked about.  She went from a B to what she claims is a D, but tonight look like double Ds.

Now, I know this may sound weird and pervy to you, but I’m fascinated by breasts.  Not in a page-3-reading-sweaty-trucker sort of a way; I mean, I’d never nudge someone at a bar or honk a horn or anything.  It’s just a very normal and healthy fascination, like that of a marine biologist looking at a bloom of plankton or a stamp collector spotting a rare 2d coil stamp at a jumble sale.  I don’t have breasts and so they fascinate me, simple as that.

So naturally I was immersed in the conversation.  Meg took us through the whole thing, the chicken fillets, the marker, the yellow fat that oozes out, the stitches and going from Kelly Clarkson to Kelly Brook in one nap. When she was finished I asked her why she had done it.  “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, it was a confidence thing”.   Paul, who knows why women do things even more than the women themselves, pipes in: “Totally, it did a huge amount for Andrea”.  “I suppose” I said, nodding sagely as if I was in the loop, which I wasn’t.  I hadn’t a clue Andrea’s boobs were fake.  Andrea wears a lot of low-cut tops but she’s also slightly cross-eyed which makes it impossible to know when it’s safe to ogle.  Ogle is obviously the wrong word, but an equivalent escapes me for the moment.  I poured some more sake.

“Are they still sore?” Paul asks then.  “No, do want to feel them?” Meg says, pulling his hand towards her ladybits.  As brazen as you like, Paul starts squeezing Meg’s upgrades as if he’s buying vegetables off a greengrocer.  If I didn’t know them since primary school, it would have been extremely uncomfortable.  After I while I got impatient: “Here, give us a go.”  Meg laughs, as if this idea were preposterous.  “What, this is because Paul is gay I’m not?  That’s discrimination.  Look, it’s not a sexual thing, I promise, come on.  I’ve never felt them before”.  “Ok, but if you get a trouser tent I’m telling your wife”.  And with that, I touched her boobs.

They were springy.  Springier than normal, but not rock hard like I’d imagined.  I’d heard from friends that they can be really hard, but these were definitely, well, springy with a good yield.  I was contemplating this when I looked up at the doorway and my lift home had appeared.  That’d be the wife, hair wet from the rain, car keys in her hand, face like Hurricane Katrina.  “Having fun?”

I jumped back as if I had just gotten an electric shock, and then started giggling nervously, “Okay, so this looks bad.  Allow me to explain”.  As the reality of the situation set upon me, I stopped giggling and just said nothing for the longest time.  Meg stood up and then sat down again.  Ciara started putting on her coat, wisely sensing that it was time to abandon ship.  I looked at the karaoke machine – in one of those unlikely moments of chance, Aretha Franklin’s Respect was queued to play next.  We left before the fat lady sang.

On the way home I got a right bollocking.  On the one hand, my beloved wasn’t remotely worried that something was going on between Meg and I.  She knows we are just friends and in fairness I’ve come home to a dinner party where her male guests have been wearing her underwear as party hats, so jealousy doesn’t feature in our relationship.  However, she did make the point, rather emphatically I might say, that it’s just inappropriate to be touching another woman’s boobs, no matter what the circumstances.  “And you looked like a total perv”, she said.  I stammered out my bit having a healthy and natural interest in breasts.  “Like a trainspotter at Victoria Station”, I mused innocently.  She looked across with an arched eyebrow.

“Well I hope you enjoyed yourself tonight, because I’ve a feeling there’s a rail strike coming.”   And that, as they say, was that.