The Manly

WHO WAS IT who said that slovenliness kills love? Pete and Julie had been married for eight years and had arrived at that station you pull into in the middle of the night where no one announces it’s the end of the line.

They must have still loved one another because Julie wouldn’t have stayed in the marriage if she’d felt it was hopeless. But each took the other for granted: Julie never wore makeup, and Pete’s spare tyre, which might once have served a kid’s tricycle, would now be a better fit for a Mini. He drank more than his share of beer and guzzled fried food. His workmates and I pulled his leg about it, “Podgy Pete”, we’d call him.

Pete grumbled about no longer being able to fit into his pants. Julie joked that he should buy some with an elasticised waistband, but mostly she just said, “I like a cuddly man. I don’t want you going all skinny on me.”

Julie thought Pete was taking fat far too seriously. One weekend, while she was redecorating the dining room and Pete was polishing off fried eggs, bacon and fried bread, Pete said, “I’d better skip lunch,” as though suggesting he should have both legs amputated. “At this rate, I won’t be able to get into my clothes.”

Julie swore he had a tear in his eye. She put down her paintbrush and picked up one of the yellowed sheets of newspaper that had been spread out under the now rolled-up carpet. “Perhaps you should try one of these,” she said.

“What?”

“‘Inches off your waist instantly. Full depth. Silken finish’.”

“What are you on about, woman? This is a crisis.”

“‘The MANLY’,” she said, reading from the paper. “It’ll pull in your waist two to five inches. Looks like a corset, only more… medical.”

“Here, give me that,” said Pete. He read the coupon aloud as he filled it in with a ballpoint pen. “‘Smartens looks and slims!’ ‘Please send me my MANLY by return. I will pay the postman thirty-five shillings plus postage’. Shillings! There… unless the MANLY works, it’s the knackers yard for me.” He guessed at his waist measurement and pushed aside the newspaper.

“They call them ‘love handles’ for a reason,” said Julie. “And I love you as you are.” But she played along and, while Pete watched, clipped out the coupon with the kitchen scissors, put it in an envelope, stuck on a stamp and wrote down the address.

When somehow this coupon from a thirty-five-year-old newspaper made its way to the post office, it didn’t seem so strange in itself. But when the postman arrived two weeks later, carrying a brown paper parcel and wanting to know how much a shilling was, Julie couldn’t contain herself.

The MANLY was the talk of the office. Pete’s work colleagues gathered around his desk to watch him demonstrate “the famous MANLY ‘Locked Hands’ principle”, and no one ever called him Podgy Pete again.