#bridgetbythebridge: January 2016

Something pretty horrible happened over the past month. Two men, men that I had adored since I was a giggling schoolgirl, men who shaped my blossoming adolescent sexuality, men that had very, very sexy voices, men that had very, very dodgy teeth, English men, two brilliantly sexy men, died.

David Bowie, matinee idol he was not; he had two different coloured eyes, he had a squinty glare, he was tall, he was reed thin, not especially well toned, he was pale and pasty, and dear god, when he smiled. When he smiled he revealed two rows of gnashers that could make a hippo envious. David Bowie was not pretty, he was not especially handsome, he was certainly not the epitome of masculine beauty; David Bowie was hot.

The Thin White Duke flashed across my early morning TV screen bopping around like a bit of a loony, he wore very odd outfits and sang songs about things I didn’t really understand. Motherbear was a bit of a fan. She would play his songs very, very loudly while she cleaned the house on the weekends, usually when Dad was out. She’d remind us that ‘he wasn’t acting’ in the video for China Girl. She watched his movies, even the really weird ones, and had us watch them too. I still don’t really know what Absolute Beginners was about, but the image of his head poking up from the hot sand in Merry Christmas My Lawrence has been etched on my memory ever since I saw it, a film so dreadfully potent, I’ve only watched it the once.*

In 1986 I was ten. In 1986, we went on a family holiday to a Caravan Park north of Sydney. In 1986, Motherbear strapped her brood in the car and sat them down in front of a silver screen. In 1986, I saw Labyrinth for the first time. In 1986, I started to understand what romantic love was, what made men love girls and girls love men. David Bowie was wearing a leather coat and snakeskin leggings and a spiky wig and I was hooked. David Bowie was hot.

Last month we also said our long goodbye to Alan Rickman. He was the serpentine Severus Snape, he was the shambolic Sheriff of Nottingham, he was a lofty Louis XIV, he was that horny husband Harry in Love Actually, he was the caring, considerate, compassionate Colonel Brandon; he was a thousand faces, but to me, most memorably, always, he was a voice. #seewhatididthere

Alan Rickman had a very distinct voice; a voice so unique that his peers and fellow thespians made sport of mimicking him. He made sport of it too. Everyone wanted to have that voice. He wasn’t a box-office smashing Pitt-ly leading man; he rarely played a dashing, romantic character. Often remembered as Hans Gruber, and subsequently typecast by the Americans, he was the villain, the bad guy, and the malevolent adulterous husband. #bothsidesnow

Let me tell you loudly, on behalf of my fellow ovary pouches, just in case you testosterone tasers weren’t yet aware, Alan Rickman had a very hot voice. His voice was like the sensation of liquid chocolate sauce being poured over warm popcorn. His voice was syrup, sweet, bass and salty, and that hedonistic hum made him hot. His voice, even when he was invoking evil and adultery, was seduction with sense. He was clever, he was political, he could act and quote Shakespeare, and Alan Rickman was hot.

David Bowie and Alan Rickman; two hot men, both of whom were 69, both of whom succumbed to cancer, both of whom fuelled many a teenage/adult woman damp pants fantasy. And when I shared this fact with some of my immediate entourage, I was subject to quizzical glances, questioning stares and puzzled censure. Neither of these genii were heartthrobs, neither made the Hemsworth-Depp-Pitt cover of People’s Sexiest Men, neither were pinups, but they were hot. The ladies (and the gays) didn’t agree.

The discussion with the girls moved from criticism to conjecture as we each shared our weird, #hotornot crushes. Right Wing Politicians, Pervy Professors, Sexually Ambivalent Colleagues, people who were too old, people who were far too young and everything in between. A fully-grown man dressed in lycra as a Goblin King seems quite tame compared to someone who fancies a Wookie. #letthewookiewin

Zac Efron, Adonis of the perfect abdomen, is currently wallpapered across every second London Bus promoting Dirty Grandpa. I asked a colleague if she had seen said poster of almost naked Efron-pollo and her response surprised me. “I’m not that into him, he is just too perfect”.

So here it is. Everyone and anyone are into the pretty ones, the tall ones, the short ones, the old ones and the young ones. There is no perfect. There is no ideal. This is scientifically proven; we go for the ones we have the greatest propensity to mate with, always searching for the perfect genetic cocktail to win the race. Perhaps, like me, you prefer the ones with English teeth, lascivious voices and a penchant for close-fitting ballet tights.

*This may in fact be symptomatic of the subject matter, World War II. Schindler’s List, Paradise Road and Private Ryan, too traumatic for me, only watched them once.

My maternal grandfather, a very serious man whose mind left our earthly plane long before his physical form ever did, named her Snickles. Its a name that evokes her very specific brand of laughter; a smile that crinkles her eyes and nose, a giggle that leaves her mouth in staccato, a happiness that you definitely observed, but could only ever hear in short, sparkling bursts. #champagnegiggles

Her daughter Squeal, the micro-doppelganger, calls her Mama. Have you ever met a 3 year old that can describe colours as either dark or light? A toddler that knows the difference between lilac and purple? An infant that articulates texture and form and shade with the same facility as she identifies the different personages in the latest series of My Little Pony? She can also point out agapanthus, frangipani and kangaroo paw; she’ll also remind you which is your favourite. A little rainbow unicorn fairy that sees the world through her mothers’ kaleidoscope eyes. #lucyintheskywithdiamonds

Our mother calls her Lizard. They spend hours in each other’s company, living as they do, a handful of metres from each other. She is anything but cold-blooded, though much like her reptilian namesake, she is a woman of few and selected sounds, preferring as she does, to express herself in pictures and images and abstracts and colours. One might argue that her taciturn nature results from being born cadet into our cacaphonic house; her elder sibling had exhausted all the available words (and decibels) before Lizard ever had a chance to learn them.

I call her Lou, a shortened version of her childhood moniker, LuLuBear, but only on those all too rare occasions that I am actually, physically with her. Here in print, many years ago, I ordained her the Art-sist-ologer. She’s an Artist, of the very talented, schooled and prizewinning kind. She’s an Astrologer; Squeal’s chart was written mere hours after she exited the womb. But before all that, she was, is, and always will be, my sister.

Bess and I have had more adventures (and wine) together than your typical university sorority. Starting in the early nineties with our exchange years abroad in France and Sweden, for decades now we’ve been two, somewhat large heads of bumbling, bouncing, brown curls rambling their unique route across Europe. We’ve partied in Paris, we’ve snow-walked in Sweden, we’ve eaten in England and dined in Denmark, and on one truly awful day, we brawled in Berlin. #itwasmyfault

The good times have certainly trumped the bad. We’ve spent eons on trains together, slept in the tiniest cabin for 11 hours from Paris to Hamburg, laughing hysterically for much of the way. Pre-Smartphone, she drew out, on a piece of paper, the route from our tiny garrotte in Paris’s St Germain to Les Puces (the flea markets); a walk that would take us over two hours, one of dozens she traced so we would discover our new home on foot. #shehatedthemetro

I’ve seen more lauded paintings than you have; we’ve wandered the corridors of galleries in Berlin, in Stockholm, in London, in Bilbao and bien sûr all the French ones. Not only did I see them, I can also interpret them. I had my very own real life personal audio (and visual) guide. She explained Raphael’s obsession with light and the significance of Manet’s naked (not nude) picnic. Her lessons were heard and understood, lessons I’ve since remembered when I visited other galleries alone. I know that it is nigh on impossible to make money from just knowing about paintings, but she has enriched my life, and many others’. No one can place a value on that. #ormaybetheycan?

Years before we embarked on our global adventures, Bess and I shared a little flat in Glebe. I say we shared it but actually we rented it from a large colony of ever-present huntsman spiders. We would take it in turns to kill them. We took it in turns to wake each other up to go for breakfast in the café downstairs. We took it in turns to fetch the wet washing from the Laundromat. We took it in turns to prepare our favourite meal; a variety of cheeses and antipasti spread on a board with a bottle of wine. #lesscookingmoredrinking

It was when we lived in Glebe that one of my favourite treasures was taken from me.

When we were still adolescents, Bess sketched a coffee and a cigarette onto a bus ticket and titled it ‘the best things in life’. It was a tiny masterpiece I kept in my wallet for over ten years. That picture was stolen, along with my wallet, when I was pick-pocketed one night in a pub. I cared less about losing the cards or the money than I cared about losing that little picture. It was so well imprinted on my memory; I could most likely draw it for you now. #myprecious

Today she is a budding textile designer. The next Cath Kidston? Marimekko? Orla Kiely? House of Hackney? Who knows? If talent and determination can make a million, I look forward to a very comfortable retirement. If lifestyle acrobatics juggling a tiny person, a neurotic cattledog, a job and a passion could be remunerated at an hourly rate, she would die richer than us all. Unfortunately for those creative types, reluctantly joining us in the rat race around our world of salaries and timecards and meetings and video conferencing, self-expression and paying for handmade work is out of fashion and out of favour. If it isn’t made in Bangladesh, it is an extravagance not an investment.

But enough already, she is my bloody sister, not a bloomin’ saint.

After reading this, you’ll suspect I’m exaggerating, that no two sisters can genuinely have that much fun together, or be so close. Sure, we’re sisters; we fight, we disagree, we argue and we drive each other batshit crazy. I make her out to be some kind of superhuman Amazonian Goddess; she is beautiful, she is radiant, but she has one tiny flaw (actually two). Bess has miniature gecko hands that can stick to a ceiling. She has two mini-mitts framed by two beautiful brachydachtyly thumbs. They are bespoke knobbly nodules that in their minuscule perfection echo her brachyskelic physiognomy.

Very good things do indeed come in small packages.