Straight Up

A few days ago, Amanda had coffee with an old-school friend. To hear Amanda tell it, Esther had been quite the bombshell back in the day, but three divorces, five children and two face-lifts later, she had, in Amanda’s words, “seen better days”.

            “I don’t want to know what she says about us behind our backs,” Saffy murmured to me out of the corner of her mouth.

            “Nothing I wouldn’t say in front of it!” Amanda snapped. “Do you honestly think that I can’t hear you when you do that?”

            Recovering quickly, Saffy radiated innocence. “Do what?”
            “That whole fake whisper thing when you’re just saying it at a slightly lower volume to you normal speaking voice!”

            “Now, now,” Saffy crooned in the same soothing tone of voice I imagine a farmer must use as he’s leading jittery cows to the slaughterhouse. “I’m just teasing. No need to get your Victoria Secrets in a knot. You were telling us about Esther?”

            Amanda pursed her lips, clearly torn between annoyance and the need to tell her story. Indiscretion won the day. She sucked in a deep breath and continued.

            “You know how she recently got engaged to Martin?”

            Saffy stared up at the ceiling. “Martin. Martin. Remind me, which one he is?”
            “That short, fat venture capitalist bazillioinaire who looks like that clown from ‘It’?”

            Saffy’s bosom inflated to dangerous volumes. “Ohmygod, how could I have forgotten! Totally know who you’re talking about! She’s still engaged to him?”

            “Well, wait for it! Martin just got accused by three separate women of sexual harassment!”

            Saffy stuck a hand in her mouth to stifle the scream. Her eyes bugged wide. It was some time before she could say anything, but when she eventually lowered her hand, it was to speak in a genuine whisper that required Amanda and me to lean in to catch her words.

            “That is as gross as that snake story that Sharyn told me today!”
            “What snake story?”

            It turns out that one of Sharyn’s cousins in Sarawak keeps a pet anaconda at home. It was, apparently, something she’d rescued from a drain during a particularly bad storm some months ago, and seeing as it was a baby, she took it home and after a few days of feeding it baby mice, decided to keep it.

            “Why do people do that?” Amanda asked.

            “Wait, it gets worse,” Saffy said.

            “I don’t see how. I’m already so creeped out!”

            It turned out that Sharyn’s cousin had taken to keeping the quickly growing anaconda in bed with her and had even given it a name: Bingbing, in honour of her favourite actress Fan Bingbing of whose local Sarawak fan-club she is president.

            “I really don’t like where this story is heading,” Amanda said.

            “It gets worse,” Saffy promised. “So last week, the cousin rang her vet and told him that Bingbing was acting really weirdly. Apparently, when the cousin woke up each morning, she would find Bingbing lying next to her completely rigid in a straight line. The vet then said that she should bring Bingbing in immediately for a check-up.”

            No one is quite sure how Sharyn’s cousin managed to haul a fair-skinned anaconda into her BMW, but she showed up at the vet as instructed, at which the vet promptly confiscated Bingbing.

            “Thank God,” Amanda sighed.

            “Wait, I’m not done yet,” Saffy said. The cousin, it seems, raised a ruckus and, to his credit, the vet waited till she’d run out of steam and then said, Do you know why I asked you to bring the snake in?

            “Apparently,” Saffy said, “an anaconda uses its body length like a ruler. It was literally measuring the cousin while she slept to see if it was long enough to eat her!”

            Amanda screamed. She pushed back her chair and ran howling from the lounge room. Saffy sighed and shook her head.

            “That is easily the creepiest story I’ve ever heard in my entire life!” I told her.

            “You don’t have to tell me,” Saffy said. “It’s like staring at the sun. You just can’t un-hear it. I’ve had goosebumps all day!”
            “Wait,” I said, “but what does this story have to do with Esther and Martin?”

            “Nothing really, except that I thought the snake story was truly gross until I heard about Martin! But have you noticed,” Saffy said, staring once again at the ceiling, “how all these sexual molesters are always, well, not to offend anyone….well, fat and ugly? I just think it would be such a nice change if someone hot like, say, Chris Hemsworth was accused of rubbing himself against someone.”

            “You’re imagining that happening to you, aren’t you?” I asked.

            Saffy turned pink. “Totally.”