My friend Jess has asked me to sleep with her.  Just once. As a 40^th birthday present. To be honest, I’m not that keen.

I don’t want to sleep with a woman. I’m 40 years old, I’ve come this far in life without having done it, and I’m happy to continue not having done it indefinitely.

Of course, it’s not like Jess is asking me to have sex with her or anything. Neither of us have any interest in that (although I imagine it would give our husbands a tremendous kick). No, we've been invited to a girls’ weekend away, to a house, in the country, with a bunch of friends. Sounds lovely so far, right? Except that there will be more women than there are actual beds, so some people will have to share, and she wants to share with me. The thought fills me with horror.

Now, I’m not repulsed by the female form, by any stretch of the imagination. I love my friends very dearly. It’s just that, well, I prefer to love them from a comfortable distance. You know. Where I don’t actually have to hear them breathing.

I don’t like to share my bed with my friends. To be brutally honest, I don’t like to share my bed with anyone. This poses a minor problem, considering the fact that I am married, and when I say ‘anyone’, I include my husband. Oh, don’t get me wrong; I like sharing a room with him, and I certainly like using a bed with him (provided I’m not too tired, the kitchen is clean, and all the kids are asleep). At the end of the evening, however, I would prefer us to have a nice cuddle, then move to twin beds and slumber – separately, but together – for the rest of the night.

I’m all for the concept of sleeping in the same bed as one’s partner – in theory, anyway. It’s just the practicalities that concern me. I’m a light sleeper, and my husband… well… he bothers me. He rolls over in bed (I know – how selfish is that?) He breathes, heavily at times (I know, inconsiderate again). He pulls the covers up. He pushes the covers down. He scratches himself. He clears his throat. Of course, from the other side of the room, his throat clearing isn’t so bad. From three centimeters away from my ear, it’s like being woken by a volcano erupting in my head. At two in the morning. Every single morning.

Furthermore, I like a lot of personal space. I like to sleep in different positions. On my back, on my tummy, arms behind my head, arms to my side, arms straight up like a soldier (rarely, but I like to keep my options open), legs splayed, knees drawn up to my chest, hanging from the chandelier wearing bunny ears and a tail (okay, so that one is my husband’s fantasy).  I don’t like to be restricted in my movements by anyone pushing my limbs out of the way when I fancy a good stretch.

It’s not just in the physical realm that sharing a bed can be problematic. My husband and I do, rarely, have little arguments (using ‘little’ in the sense of ‘medium to big’), and after one of these rare occasions (using ‘rare’ in the sense of ‘quite regularly actually’) having to sleep in the same bed together is really annoying.

My husband just rolls his eyes at my attempts to expel him to the couch, so I generally curl up in a tiny fetal ball at the extreme edge of my side of the bed in order to demonstrate just how cross I am. (Of course, I could retreat to sleep on the couch myself, but that would be inconvenient and uncomfortable, so I’d rather just stay and make my point.)

Still, buying separate beds at this stage of our relationship seems like too much of a statement. We started off in a queen sized bed (before I realized the throat clearing thing was not just a temporary allergy, and when arguing still seemed like a laughable proposition) and now we’re pretty much stuck with it.

But sharing a doona? Out of the question. It’s been two single doonas for us for a very long time, and that’s how we plan to stay.

As for the weekend away? Well, I’m thinking that this time, the couch is probably my best option!

©Kerri Sackville 2010

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Dennis, the guy behind the counter at my local chicken shop is large. Very large. He’s also what my mother  would refer to as a ‘rather plain’ young man (my mum is nothing if not diplomatic). He is, however, a lovely  person and I enjoy having a chat with him when I come in to buy dinner for the kids (using ‘dinner’ in the sense  of ‘hot chips’).
Frequently, Dennis’s sister is in the chicken shop with him. She is equally large and equally plain and remarkably similar in appearance. Except that she is not his sister at all. She is his girlfriend, and – apart from the fact that his parents deny it – they could be twins separated at birth.

Now, Dennis and his girlfriend fascinate me, because they are clearly in love, and clearly extremely physically attracted to each other. I know this because I’ve seen them fondling, which – until I was alerted to the fact that they were not actually related – made me more than a little uncomfortable.

What interests me about Dennis and his girlfriend is the evident synchronicity of their appearances. Now, obviously there is no such thing as a universal scale of attractiveness, otherwise how can I explain the fact that not everyone in the world finds my husband irresistibly gorgeous? However, I think it isn’t too far a stretch to suggest that on a scale of One to Ten - where Brad and Angelina are a Ten, and your ancient ex-history teacher with the bulbous nose and yellow teeth is a One – then Dennis and his girlfriend both score around a Three.
Now this is clearly not a problem for them, as they are totally hot for each other. But if Dennis was an Eight or Nine - if he had been blessed with a fabulous face, went to the gym occasionally, and stopped eating all of that fried chicken - in other words, if he looked more like Zac Efron, and less like Homer Simpson - would he still be as madly in love with his obese girlfriend?

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I remember going on dates. I used to quite enjoy a night out with an attractive member of the opposite sex, back in the days when I was footloose and fancy free (so long ago, indeed, that “footloose and fancy free” was actually a contemporary saying).

Still, being married with kids doesn’t mean I can’t still enjoy a good date. I can and I do. It’s just that, these days, the dates I usually enjoy are the plump, sweet, fruit variety as opposed to romantic evenings out.

However, the news is not all bad. I do still occasionally have dates of the romantic kind (and yes, for those who are wondering, they are generally with my husband). It’s very important to have special time regularly with your partner, in order to keep the magic alive. After all, you don’t want to spend your entire lives together shouting to each other over the heads and voices of your children, across plates of fish fingers, bowls of jelly, and assorted cups of milk.

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I know a fair bit about men. After all, I’ve been married to one for over eleven years. More importantly, though, I have female friends. Most of these friends are married to men. And all of these friends like to talk about their relationships.  

Women talk about men. That’s what we do. This is why I know that P’s husband likes it in the middle of the night and that M’s husband always sides with his mother. Men, on the other hand, do not talk about their wives, which is why neither P’s husband nor D’s husband know a thing about me.

Now, in certain ways, my own husband is outside the mainstream. Unlike many of my friends’ partners, who are typical Aussie ‘blokes’, my husband is more of what you would call a metrosexual. He pines for designer watches like I pine for handbags. He prefers cooking shows to football games. He drinks fancy cocktails with names like ‘Summer Sunset and ‘Midori Pash’ (which admittedly is leaning less towards metrosexual and more towards disturbing).

And yet at a fundamental level, he is the same as every other man. And all men are different to women.

My husband, for example, isn’t the only intelligent man with perfect vision who is unable to locate items in the fridge, cupboard or car. This is a difficult task for males, as they don’t understand that objects – shoes, plane tickets, biscuits and the like - may be temporarily hidden behind something else. A woman appreciates that things exist even if they are not immediately visible. A man believes – no, knows – that if it not within his direct eye line, then it must be lost.  

Most men, like my husband, are also are selectively deaf, or at least become so at the onset of relationships. In the car, travel directions are strangely inaudible; during sporting events or broadcasts women’s voices are inaudible; and when taking a nap, everything is inaudible. This latter phenomenon is particularly fascinating. Though we women can hear our children through two closed doors and industrial strength earplugs (which we use to block out the sounds of our husbands snoring), men can sleep soundly not only through babies crying, but through children’s birthday parties, toddler tantrums, and visits from the in-laws.

And virtually every man I know holds a decidedly more relaxed attitude towards his body than his wife does towards hers. Males are freakishly able to eat a bar of chocolate without noting how many kilojoules it contains, or feeling the fat rushing immediately to their thighs. And – unlike us - they have no qualms about appearing in public semi-nude, no matter what kind of shape they’re in.

This was demonstrated on a recent holiday my husband and I took with several friends. Before the trip, my female friends and I groomed ourselves for a week in the sun. We waxed, we fake-tanned, we did last minute exercise (well, in my case I thought about doing last minute exercise) and we desperately sought swimwear to minimise our problem areas. Our husbands, on the other hand, felt no need for such preparation. They grabbed their three year old Speedos from the drawer, threw their disposable razors in the bin, and spent the rest of the time eating chips in front of the TV.

The holiday threw up some other fascinating observations. All the men, for example, took a very laissez faire approach to packing, despite the fact that we were going to be away for an entire week. We women (quite sensibly) drew up comprehensive lists in the days before the trip, and then packed the day prior to departure in a systematic and orderly fashion. The men on the other hand, watched TV until fifteen minutes before leaving, then threw their stuff haphazardly into a bag.

Then there was the grocery shopping. We women see supermarket shopping as a chore; we do it all the time, and there’s only so much excitement one can muster for aisles of personal hygiene products and gluten free crackers. Many men, however, enter supermarkets only on holidays, and view them as vast adventure lands with lots of thrilling new things to try. My husband and I went in for barbecue supplies and came out with chocolate waffle mix, Wasabi peas and carbonated lychee drink. My friend’s husband returned with several bars of chocolate, a variety of biscuits, and peach flavoured instant tea. Novel, yes, but hardly the basic fare to feed a family of five.

But of course it was at the good old Aussie barbecue that the line between the sexes was definitively drawn.

Though women are trusted to cook meat in an oven or on a stove, we are not permitted near a barbecue. Clearly when it comes to open flames, women must be protected at all costs (or perhaps it is the flames that must be protected from the women?). Women are allowed to marinate the meat, but once the steak and chops leave the safety of the basting tray they are out of bounds to anyone without a Y chromosome. Women make salads, men make fire. It is how it has always been.

Now, given my extensive knowledge of the male species, I did not expect to be surprised about any of their behaviour. At the barbecue, however, I learned that one of my previously held beliefs had been very wrong.  

It has often been said – and I have always assumed – that women can multi-task whereas men can’t. Ours is a skill born of necessity, learning to cook a casserole whilst feeding the baby with one hand and answering the phone with the other, all the while supervising homework, prising glassware out of toddlers’ hands, and making mental notes of what needs to be done the following day.

Men, on the other hand, are only required to perform one task at a time. They work, they play, or they relax. Easy.

Well, it’s certainly true that on our holiday the women’s multitasking continued. We sat in the sun reading books in five second grabs whilst juggling our babies on our knees, supervising the little kids in the pool, refereeing fights between the older kids, reapplying sunscreen to all offspring, procuring drinks and refreshments, and asking our snoring husbands for the fifth time to get some towels.

However, I misjudged the men. Turns out they can multitask too. They were perfectly capable of turning snags on the barbie while drinking beer (or, in my husband’s case, Midori Pash) and talking about cricket.

Who says men and women are different?