The Fat Woman's Joke Read Free

trousers,” said Susan.
    â€œBut trousers are no bother.”
    â€œYou’re supposed to bother. You’ve got to bother if you’re a woman. Otherwise you might as well be a man.”
    â€œIt’s not fair. I didn’t ask to be born with legs like pillars.”
    â€œI daresay they are good for child-bearing.”
    â€œCan I look?” Brenda lived in hope that one day Susan would paint a flattering portrait of her. Susan never did.
    The telephone rang.
    â€œYou’d better answer it,” said Susan. “If it’s Alan I’m not at home. I’ve gone away for a month to the country.”
    It wasn’t Alan, but a wrong number.
    â€œPerhaps you should ring him,” ventured Brenda, “then you wouldn’t be so edgy.”
    â€œI’m not edgy,” said Susan. “I am upset. So we’re all upset. Loving is upsetting. That’s the point of it.”
    â€œWhat about his wife? Is she upset?”
    â€œI don’t think she feels very much at all. Like fish feel no pain when you catch them. From what Alan says, her emotional extremities are primitive.”
    â€œIf I went out with a married man I’d feel awful,” said Brenda.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI’d worry about his wife.”
    â€œYou are very different from me. You are fundamentally on the side of wives, and families. I don’t like wives, on principle. I like to feel that any husband would prefer me to his wife. Wives are a dull, dreadful, boring, possessive lot by virtue of their state. I am all for sexual free enterprise. Let the best woman win.”
    â€œIf you were married,” said Brenda, “you would not talk like that.”
    â€œIf I was married,” said Susan, “which heaven forbid, I would make sure I outshone every other woman in the world. I wouldn’t let myself go.”
    â€œAlan didn’t seem your type at all.”
    â€œI don’t have a type. You are very vulgar sometimes. You know nothing about sex or art or anything.”
    â€œI don’t know why you always want to paint me, then. You seem to have such a low opinion of me. It is very tiring.”
    â€œYou have a marvelous face,” said Susan. “If only you would do something with it.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, do something with it?”
    â€œGive it a kind of style, or put an expression on it that suited it.”
    â€œWhat would suit it?” Brenda was worried.
    â€œI don’t know. I’m getting very bored. Shall we go to the pub?”
    â€œI don’t like sitting about in pubs. All those dreary smelly people, so full of drink they don’t know what they’re doing. Last time I was in a pub a man peed himself, he was so drunk. How can you talk to anyone in a pub?”
    â€œYou go to pubs to enjoy yourself, not to talk. Communication is on a different level altogether. Sometimes I think you should run home to Mummy. You have no gift for living.”
    â€œOh, all right, we’ll go to the pub. But will you tell me all about Alan?”
    â€œWhat about him? What do you want to know? You are very prurient.”
    â€œI don’t want to know all about that. I want to know what you felt. You make me feel so outclassed. Your relationships are so major, somehow. Nothing like that ever happens to me.”
    â€œHe was on a diet,” said Susan. “That’s a feminine kind of thing to be really. On the whole, masculine things are boring and feminine things are interesting.”
    â€œMen don’t bore me,” said Brenda. “Everything else, but I’ve never been bored by a man.”
    â€œThen you’re lucky. But that wasn’t what I was saying. You are very dim sometimes.”
    Susan took off her smock. Brenda put on her shoes.
    â€œYou never know with men,” said Susan, pulling on an open lacework dress over a flesh-colored body-stocking. “The ones who are most interesting before, are