The Laundry's the Key to those Really Steamy Nights

by Richard Glover

With all the extra housework occasioned by lead-poisoned children, it's lucky someone can joke about it.

You can read more humorous stories by Richard Glover in his recently published book entitled ((Laughing Stock - One Man's Battle with Sex, Work and a Son called Batboy", published by Allen and Unwin, $14.95.

According to yesterday's front page, the Americans have finally manufactured an effective aphrodisiac - but my wife Jocasta's not interested. She says there' s only one thing that really gets her going - and that's the sight of her husband, bending over in a pair of shorty pajamas, buttocks waggling and thighs clenched, as he scrubs the kitchen floor.

Just like powdered rhino horn, it's an aphrodisiac whose appeal may well be linked to its extreme rarity. Knowing that the kitchen floor - and its cleaning - now represents one of Jocasta' s major erogenous zones, I have begun approaching the task with some caution.

Jocasta, after all, may be so delighted to see me stir from the couch that she'll demand I spring-clean the whole house. That's the problem with my wife's idea of foreplay - it always seems to involve rubber gloves, a bucket of sudsy water and my spending two hours in the company of major cleaning products.

As she puts it herself, lifting the ironing basket into my arms and nodding sternly towards the iron: "If it's not on, it's not on."

Many other women get stimulated these days by plug-in appliances, but only Jocasta ends up with a full rack of neatly pressed office-wear. She's my Lysistrata of the pots and pans, and she expects things to be a turn-on for both herself and the iron.

That's the thing about a lot of men: they don't realise how women can be erotically affected by the sight of a man ironing. "Who needs Iron John," as various feminists have put it. "It's an Ironing John we're after".

Forget spray-on female attractant pheromones, whose optimistic sales pitch appears in People magazine: "You've probably noticed the appeal that some guys have for girls, although they are not handsome. They're wearing pheromones." You'd do better by far to save your $44.95, and instead try a far more effective attractant: that subtle smell of the Sensitive New Age Guy, achieved by a quick squirt of Fabulon behind the ears.

Just like the pheromones, the incredible Fabulon works on a woman's sub-conscious - WITHOUT HER KNOWING WHY. Amazingly, she won't understand why she wants to leave the disco, clutching your arm, somehow thinking you're a nice houseworky sort of bloke.

Nor, when you get home, will she understand why she's behaving so rashly: suddenly removing all her clothes, throwing them dramatically in the comer, and begging you, in her throatiest voice, to gently launder them.

It's the power of Fabulon, and it's working for you.

The next morning she'll report back to her friends: "It was great - he did it non-stop - with his iron getting hotter and hotter. It was one of those really steamy nights."

By the end of the week, you'll have women queuing to take off all their clothes, and find yourself filling in the People coupon for yet another can. "You've probably noticed the appeal that some guys have for girls, although they're not handsome - that's right, they're wearing Fabulon."

But Fabulon isn't the only odd aphrodisiac. My first girlfriend was aroused by something even stranger: the fact that her parents might come home any minute and discover that we were not, as promised, engaged in our divinity project.

The father involved was about ten feet tall, a one-time army commando, a lifelong Catholic, and was already on the verge of having both his daughters and me executed on the grounds of suspected communism.

Perhaps she liked the fact that, whenever we were together, my heart starting pounding, and the blood would drain from my face. But what a range of emotions I felt when cradled in her arms, with the bedroom door closed - the full gamut from paralysing terror to nauseous fear.

Perhaps the Americans would be better off forgetting their chemicals, and instead battle the world's anti-aphrodisiacs: those ten-foot parents with quiet footsteps; or, later in life, those two-foot children with the pitter-patter of incredibly loud feet.

The Americans want to help those with suppressed libidos, but we can do the work through legislation. We'll just ban everything likely to reduce the nation's sex drive: polyester shirts, children who won't go to bed, car seats that won't shift back, bras that won't undo, parents that ring after 10 pm, and Bert Newton broadcasts at bedtime.

And, of course, we'll demand that all men take a daily dab of that subtle but unmistakable fragrance that is Fabulon. I think I'll pop some on right now.

(Reprinted with the kind permission of Richard Glover. First appeared page 12, Sydney Morning Herald, July 30, 1993.)