Rack It Up
Newcastle Herald
Saturday February 23, 2008
The Ashwa (Horse Man) is known by a lingam of about 12 fingers. He is reckless in spirit, covetous, gluttonous, volatile, lazy, and full of sleep.
This is a "best of" column. Ben is back on deck next week, having just celebrated his second anniversary.So here we've finally arrived, the hopelessly smitten groom and his miraculous bride, deep in the bosom of the Hunter Valley bush. The Gods have turned on a starry, starry sky, velvet black and peaceful, for the first night of our honeymoon. The planets are beyond aligning they're making crazy love like Venus intended. Far out cats, it's been so joyous, so surreal.It seems fitting that our first endeavour as man and wife should be a spot of boning up on the erotic texts of the Ananga Ranga, a long-lost relative of the Kama Sutra. "I'm assuming a lingam is a wang?" I ponder. Mischief crosses my barmaid supernova's lips as we breathe the pure mountain air and gaze into Paradise. "Come here, Mr Ed," purrs my new wife (wow, that sounds weird but wonderful). "It's been so wild. What a blur."I have to concede that the past little while has, indeed, torn through our nook with the force of a Kostya Tszyu combination. When I proposed to Melissa in this column roughly a year ago, I had a vision of corralling our cherished musician friends, throwing on a flash bag of fruit and pinching our long-suffering publican parents to lay on the grog and a tasty spread. The venues the sprawling rural magnificence of Tocal Homestead on the Saturday, Melissa's family's Grand Junction Hotel on the Sunday were settled upon without fuss. We would merely be required to turn up on the day and preside regally over proceedings as everything somehow clicked like clockwork. There would be none of the stress experienced by so many in the build-up to their big day. Hair-trigger meltdowns were for the mentally challenged. Speed humps would be negotiated with carefree maturity. We were cool like Willie Nelson and Richie Benaud, no risk, but there were manic moments amid the gathering momentum. "I think we did ourselves proud," I boast, taking my wife by the hand as we slink into a warm rainwater spa, ecstatic and spent."Bloody oath," she whispers. "It was very us."A short time later, mellow on the afterglow, we find ourselves running through a slideshow of wedding memories that won't fade away.Two things stand out in the fortnight leading up to our two-day celebration. Regular readers would know I'm a sucker for Melissa's monumental rack. Well, I'm here to tell you, the monumental rack has actually been expanding of late. Fair dinkum, dead heat in a zeppelin race! The bride was genuinely concerned the levee could break, unleashing the gates of Heaven on our unsuspecting relatives and friends. I should be so lucky. And another thing. The traditional day on the turps with the girls almost ended in heartache when Melissa, by this stage thoroughly flyblown, crunched her sister, Bridget, in a tackle that would have given Joey Johns an irregular heartbeat. Bridget broke her ankle on her own pre-wedding bender and was in a full cast when she took Sexy Dick as her lawful wedded husband in April '99. Fortunately history didn't repeat; I found the lunatics guffawing hysterically in the Telarah dirt, but otherwise unbroken in all the right places. Which brings us to the wedding weekend. The whole shebang was a sweet dream. Thunder grumbled, lightning lashed the sky and a howling southerly threatened to blow our guests away as my vision in white walked down the grassy aisle. Then a magical thing happened. Everything went eerily still as we exchanged vows and the Lairs cruised through Signed, Sealed, Delivered. Ray Charles and our other guardian angels must have pulled some strings. The next 26 hours will take years to sink in, not least a helicopter ride from our bush retreat to the pub, where hundreds of screaming friends lined the car park and made us feel like the Beatles. The soundtrack to be released on vinyl next Lent featured the Lairs, Glenny Rae Virus, Billie Green, the Receptionists, Johnny Green's Blues Cowboys, trailblazing Melburnians Ray Dee Ator and Lil Odette of the Red Hot Poker Dots (thanks for driving so far, you legends), Leigh Ivin of the Re-mains and the infinitely incredible Slots. "We're blessed," Melissa says, wrapping her fine frazzled self in a towel and gesturing towards the boudoir."Hallelujah to that, gorgeous," I yawn.Without fear of contradiction, it has been the best of times. But before we tumble into the sack, there's one more thrilling thing we'd like to share with our nearest and dearest, a fact that neatly explains the aforementioned expansion of Melissa's twins. We're up the duff.
© 2008 Newcastle Herald
