Slush and Mud

by Hugh Todd

Can’t say I’ve ever been a great one for mud-wrestling. Not watchin’ it, that is, but you don’t often get the chance to have a go yourself, do you? You’ve got to have the figure for it, and Warren has never wanted to go and says you’d stink for days after, which isn’t true. I think he’s worried that if I went it might sort of come out of my skin and contaminate him or somethin’. He’s such a clean bugger, I don’t know where he gets it, his mum and dad’s place looks like Parramatta Park after a rock concert.

Anyway, Yvonne rings me up the other day and asks if I want to go in it. If I can, you can, she says, you look a lot better than I do. Which is true, although I don’t say so, coz she would have to be at least three sizes bigger than me and she sags a bit, too, the poor thing, she’s too young to be droopin’ already. Besides, she says, this one’s for real women, that’s what the organisers say, and since one of them’s ’er cousin she believes it.

I’m not sure what she means by ’real women’, but at least she thinks I’m one, and Yvonne’s usually got a good nose for a bit of fun, so I go yes and right away I start to think how I can get Warren away for that day so he don’t get upset. What he don’t know can’t get ’is knickers in a knot, I always say. I’m so busy thinkin’ about this that Yvonne has to shout down the phone. Sorry, I say, did you say ’pygarg’? Well I can’t hear a peep for such a long time I wonder if she’s still there, and then she says she doesn’t know where I get words like that, but what she was saying was that there’s no point in wearin’ goggles or eye-guards coz they just get covered in mud, which I already know, so I say I’d better start gettin’ the meal ready for his majesty, he does like to be on time.

Well from then on I start thinkin’ what could Warren be doin’ on the day of the mud-wrestle? Like as not he’ll be wantin’ to be doing somethink really exciting like cleanin’ out the garage or sortin’ out his screws into matching piles and puttin’ them in labelled containers. It’s hard to get him out the door sometimes, I dunno, some men are just homebodies.

The best way, I think, is to try and get one of his friends to take him out for the day. But I can’t just ring ’em up and ask them, coz men have their dignity and I don’t want any of ’is mates having a go at ’im for bein’ organised by me. Besides, they might wanna know why I wanted ’im out of the house, and might tell Warren. No, you have to get the blokes to think it’s their own idea, then they’ll be happy to do it and stick to it.

Funny, during tea I must be thinkin’ so hard Warren wonders if I’m all right, but I just say I was thinkin’ about his body, which is true in a way coz I don’t want it around on the day, so he gets this silly smile on his face. Men. They think you must find them irresistible objects of sexual potency. If you ever want to distract a man, let him think it’s true.

Next day, I give Vick a ring. You can rely on Vick to get Shane thinkin’ along the right lines. Dunno what to suggest, I say, and she goes, don’t worry, Shane’ll do anything to get out of mowin’ the lawns and runnin’ the kids around, I’ll just tell ’im to piss off with Warren for the day.

Sure enough, a few days later Warren starts beatin’ around the bush about somethin’ and then he finally comes out and says he wants to go off with Shaney for the day. I go, well what about the garage, and then I kick meself coz he just about caves in on the spot and I have to say I want ’im to go coz I’d like to have ’im out from under me feet for the day.

So here we are, Yvonne and me, headin’ out west to the mud hole. We’ve got our old cozzies and a picnic and we’re gigglin’ and jokin’ like schoolgirls. It’s all girls goin’, she says, and gives me a nudge, I’m not sure why, but I’m laughin’ so much I forget to ask.

Well, we park the car and splish splash across the wide weir, and we come across one of the other women. She seems to be waitin’ for someone, and then it looks like it was us, because Yvonne tells her somethin’ and she looks happy and tells us they’re all ready to go. She doesn’t come with us, though, just stays where she is, sittin’ on a little camp stool with a New Idea and a mobile.

We bowl through the trees and all of a sudden we’re there, and I just about have a heart attack on the spot, I tell you. There’s all these women standin’ around and they’re all starkers! Why didn’t you tell me about this, I hiss to Yvonne. Coz you wouldna’ come, she says, with a big grin like a halfwit. You’re bloody right I wouldn’t, I say, I’m off home. And I do a u-turn on the spot and start headin’ outa there. I’m no earth mother sort and I’m sure as hell no exhibitionist, not with my body, and I don’t need to ogle no one else’s body, neither.

We get a few steps back down the path and Yvonne says, you thought I was jokin’ in the car, didn’t you, well here’s your chance. Coz we’d been saying how sensual it would feel to go in nude, you’d have the mud slippin’ all over you like warm hands giving you a massage everywhere at once. That was just silly talk, I say, and what about all them other women, it’s not as if it’s just us two.

You’d feel silly if you had your costume on and no one else did, wouldn’t ya, says Yvonne, they’d think you was just there to look at them. Fair’s fair, you have to join in. If you hadn’t noticed, I says, I was just on my way back home, so they won’t have to worry about me at all. Yvonne just gives me a big hug, which I don’t want just then coz I’m buzzin’ like a bee in a bottle, then she rubs my arms with her hands and says in a really husky voice, mmm, just think of all that luscious, oozing mud, and I laugh and let my shoulders drop and say all right, if you can I can. Coz I really do like the thought of that warm sludge all over me, it’s just all them other bodies that put me off.

We strip down and in we all go, some takin’ it slowly like it’s the public baths or somethin’ with the water a bit chilly, some straight in. Yvonne scoops up handfuls of the stuff and smears it slowly over her arms and legs and other bits with a rapt look on her face. Some of the women seem to think all that mud in one place is like findin’ a dunny full of flies, but once they’re in they yell and scream like the best of us.

One of the women blows a whistle and calls out for everyone to come over for the wrestling. She’s got a list covered in a plastic bag, which gets harder and harder to read coz she has to keep wipin’ mud splashes off it and it gets all smeared. She says a couple of names and the women who belong to them slide forward, cacklin’ and shriekin’ fit to bust as we all do, partly coz we’re glad it’s not us going first. We keep our shoulders under the mud so it won’t dry, we’re out in the deeper bit.

The whistle woman tells the two wrestlers what they can and can’t do, and they’re off, tryin’a’ pull each other down, slippin’ and staggerin’ and we’re all laughing so much I think I’m going to pull a serious muscle. Around Yvonne the mud sort of quivers like it’s joining in.

Yvonne and me get to have a fight, I can’t believe how slippery she is, I can’t get a hold of her. She wraps her arms around me and I try to slither out but we both overbalance and I fall on top of her, squelch, mud everywhere, in our hair, all over our faces, it’s hard coz with all the laughin’ the mud tries to get in our open mouths as well. I’m level with the spectators’ eyes, some of ’em, anyway, they’re all wrinkled up and sparklin’ with fun, and one woman makes a kissy mouth at me as if to say how mucky and disgusting I look.

By now everyone looks like those earth soldiers they found in China, only wet-looking. And woman-shaped.

Just then there’s a shout and a carry-on and the woman with the stool comes runnin’ towards us hoppin’ mad and says she saw a couple of men in the bushes and when she yelled they ran away. We all go quiet at this point and I feel all dirty and exposed and angry that men had to go and ruin all our fun, even if they didn’t do nothin’ just knowin’ they were probably havin’ a good perve was enough.

We try to carry on enjoyin’ ourselves but all the fun has run away with the men, so we creep out and put on our old cozzies so we can go and wash in the river and then we go home.

I really enjoyed that, I tell Yvonne, thanks for gettin’ me to do it, I half cacked meself laughin’ back there. She says, you looked like Naomi Campbell when you got out, and I tell her more like the King of Tonga who needs two seats in an aeroplane and I wonder if he gets two meals to go with ’em, and we laugh again and she heads off home.

Well that woulda’ been that ’cept Warren says a funny thing happened when he was out with Shane. They had Shane’s boat and pulled up on the shore to have a few beers, and they’re just sittin’ there feeling mellow when they start to hear all these screams from close by. They look at each other and think, jeez, what’s goin’ on, and stagger off through the trees to make sure no one’s gettin’ murdered or somethin’. What do they find but a whole coven of witches prancin’ around in a big circle, covered in mud but you could see they was naked, and some sort of sacrifice or somethin’ goin’ on in the middle. The hair stood up on the back of ’is neck, he said, and the two of ’em just took off out of there, with some woman shoutin’ out curses after ’em. They was lucky to get out of there alive, he reckons, coz by the way the screamin’ suddenly stopped he figured the sacrifice had been done, and they could’ve been next if they’d got any closer.

Well thank goodness for that, I say, and Warren says, yeah, but he’s thankful he wasn’t caught and offered up to the devil, where I’m thankful he and Shane didn’t get any closer and see that one of them wicked witches was ’is wife. You won’t want to go near that place again, I say, and he says yeah, we’ll go up river next time, and I think hmm, next time, yeah, next time I might ask Vick along as well.